Emil sat crossed from Peter and stared at his hands. He felt drained. He had felt drained so often the past few days he wasn't sure when he had had time to recharge. Peter hadn't spoken since Emil had gotten here. It was the longest stretch of silence that Emil had ever enjoyed in the presence of Peter. Emil wasn't sure how much time had passed. One hour? Two? The whole morning? What time was it? Emil didn't care.
Neither of them felt like there was anything that needed to be said. Peter was smarter than what Emil gave him credit for.
Emil glanced up, Peter's fingers traced the grain in the wood table. Emil noted that his finger never varied from a particular knot and group of streaks. Emil sighed and got up. He walked to one end of Berwald's kitchen and studied the counter, then he turned and walked to the kitchen door and stopped again. The doorway looked into the unlit hall. Emil turned and walked back to the counter. Then back to the door.
"Please don't pace." Peter said, "You're making me nervous."
Emil sat down again.
Emil's phone rang. He and Peter looked at it in surprise.
"Hello?"
"Hey Emil!"
Emil nearly dropped the phone. Mathias sounded as if he were standing in the kitchen. Mathias sounded chipper, happy, and over all normal.
"Mathias?" Emil choked, Peter's head shot up and his eyes locked on the phone, "Tino? Where are you what happened?"
Mathias laughed, "A better question is, where are you?"
"Mathias! What happened to everyone?" Emil said, "Where is Lu-"
"No." Mathias's voice grew hard, "No, listen to me. You have to trust us, you have to do what I tell you or everything that has happened in the last few days will all be a waste."
Emil couldn't find his voice. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"Emil? Do you understand? You have to work with us on this one."
"Tell me one thing." Emil said slowly.
Mathias sighed, "One thing."
"Are you all going to jail?"
"Yes."
It took all of Emil's willpower to not hang up. It took all of Emil's willpower to not yell at Mathias, to not complain and rant and rave. No, instead Emil just nodded.
"You jerks."
Mathias laughed, "Yeah, we are the biggest jerks on the planet!"
"I glad you recognize that." Emil said emotionlessly.
"I know you're mad, but that doesn't really matter right now." Mathias said, "We each only have one phone call available to us and I'm using mine right now. Just finished talking to Lukas and he wanted me to make sure that you really were talking on the radios earlier."
Emil nodded, then remembered Mathias couldn't see him, "Yeah, I was trying to contact you."
"Ah, so Mr. Kirkland isn't as evil as Tino thinks he is."
"What? What happened?" Emil swallowed, "Did you hear me?"
"It doesn't matter." Mathias said quickly, "Are you with Peter?"
Emil opened his eyes and looked at Peter, "Yes."
"Good. After Tino makes his call, there will be only two phone calls left available to us." Mathias sounded strangely thoughtful, "The next time one of us calls you, you need to take Peter home, then go to my house. Who ever calls, either Lukas or Berwald, will probably not be able to speak as freely as I can now, but remember that call is really an OK to take Peter home."
"Please, Mathias, what is going on?" Emil asked, forcing his voice to remain steady.
Mathias just sighed again, "You'll understand everything soon. Just know that we are all good with this."
"You're all leaving me."
"No, we're freeing you."
"Right."
"When you get to my house you are going to meet the newest member of the North. His name is Estonia."
Emil sighed, "Right, is this someone who I've met before?"
"Maybe, he is a friend of Tino's."
"Okay, whatever."
"One other thing."
"What?"
"The North is officially disbanded."
Emil closed his eyes again, "Whatever." He hung up.
Did they ever think about how their actions effected him? Did they ever think that maybe he didn't want to be free? He wanted everything to go back to normal.
"What did he say?"
Emil looked up at Peter in mild surprise. Right, Peter was here. Emil shrugged, "The next time one of them calls, it will be either Lukas or Berwald, and I need to take you home."
Peter's face was eerily blank. He just looked at Emil for a moment then nodded slowly, "If it's Berwald, I want to talk to him."
Emil nodded, "Next time the phone rings, we'll put the phone on speaker."
Peter nodded. Emil put the phone on the middle of the kitchen table and the two fell into silence.
Arthur stood outside the agency and waited. The chief of police was on his way to pick up the North and take them out of Arthur's hands. He felt disgusted with himself. He had spent the last two hours sorting though evidence. Something that was not done. He had taken out all things that discriminated Emil. He had edited evidence. That was not done. That was wrong. During the time Emil was arrested, Arthur removed all things that could make that arrest valid. It made him look bad. It made him look like he randomly went around arresting little kids. It made him look like he randomly accepted delinquent's accusations of their classmates. It made it look like Vlad was insane and Arthur felt terrible.
However, Lukas had held up his end of the deal. Lukas had spilled everything. He had told locations of drop offs, their clients, their clients's roles in the underworld, how much the North was paid for each job, how they broke into each place, a ridiculous amount of random information about the underworld and how the underworld operated, plus where Lukas suspected all of the items where now. Arthur had done some searching, and of the information he checked, it was all correct or fit beautifully into the puzzle.
If Arthur thought he was spoiling his own good name, he knew that what Lukas had given him destroyed the North's entire career. As far as Arthur could tell, Lukas had made an enemy of just about all of the underworld. At this point, it was looking like Lukas would be safer in prison than if Arthur let him go. Then again, chances where that the folks in prison wouldn't be too happy about the information leak either.
Arthur shook his head. He was getting soft. Was he really feeling sympathy toward Lukas? Nah, Lukas had taken Peter. Lukas had been the mind behind the North. Lukas had been his bad guy. Now Lukas was going to jail. Justice was served.
Emil would never feel the repercussions of being part of the North. Emil would get off scot free. Arthur had edited the evidence.
What on earth was he doing? Editing evidence? To save some kid? One did not edit evidence.
The police car drove up.
Arthur greeted the chief warmly and escorted him to the cells that held the North. Apparently Mathias and Tino had used their phone calls.
As the police started moving the North to the cars, Lukas looked at Arthur.
"You understand that once I tell you everything, I am trusting you to uphold your end of this deal." Lukas's eyes had bore into Arthur.
"Yes, I assure you that if you pull through, I will too." Arthur had said, "Emil will be the best of kids and you will be villanized."
"This still comes back to the problem that your morals may take the high ground and you may leave the evidence the way it is."
Arthur had sat back in the chair, "You could also say that Peter may never come home." Arthur shrugged, "This is a gamble for both of us."
Lukas had closed his eyes and nodded slowly, "I hope this trust is not mislaid."
"Of the two of us, I'm not the one who broke into houses for a living."
"That's the problem."
Arthur watched the police take Lukas and Mathias away. They were put into the same car. Next came Berwald and Tino. Suddenly Berwlad stopped.
"I want to make a call."
Arthur looked at the huge man in surprise. He wasn't sure he could imagine such a long sentence, much less an entire phone conversation.
Arthur nodded and brought Berwald to the phone. Berwald dialed, carefully blocked Arthur's view of the number then raised the phone to his ear.
"Hello. It's me." Berwald said the paused. "No."
Arthur watched Berwald carefully, but nothing changed.
"I wanted to say good bye." Berwald said, his tone still flat and his face blank, "Be good."
As Berwald took the phone from his ear and started to hang up, Arthur could hear the person on the other end of the phone talking in a quick, high pitched, distressed tone.
Click. It was gone.
Berwald bobbed his head and turned to the chief of police, "Thank you."
The chief nodded and led Berwald away. Arthur trailed after them. He stood in front of the agency and watched the police cars whisk the North and evidence away.
Arthur leaned back against the agency building. The police cars turned and vanished. His hand went to his phone. He stopped. It would be unreasonable to expect Peter to be magically home now that the North were gone. Give it an hour.
Arthur walked back inside and plopped himself down at his desk with a sigh. The culprits put away, lots of information that would benefit not only his team but probably Francis's and Ivan's as well. All that was left to do was to actually locate the items. The bank could fix the loop in their security system, Arthur would get his little brother back, Emil would go back to living a normal life, the other North would go to jail. This were looking up. Arthur was winning.
So, why did he feel so terrible?
Arthur's phone rang.
"Arthur?"
Arthur's breath caught. "Peter?"
"Arthur? Allistor told me to call you, so here I am; calling you." Peter's voice was flat, but definitely Peter.
"Peter? Are you okay? Did they treat you well? Is everything okay? Are you at home now?" Arthur's words spilled out of him, he closed his eyes and forced himself to stop talking, he just wanted to hear Peter talk. He just wanted to hear the sound of that voice. Just wanted to know things were okay again.
"Yeah." Peter sounded uncaring, "It was fine, no problems. I'm at home, now."
Arthur wanted to smile, to be happy, but a small red light seemed to be flashing in the back of his mind. Something was wrong. Peter was off. Peter wasn't acting like Peter. What happened?
"Are you sure that you're okay?" Arthur asked slowly, "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah." Peter said, lifelessly, "Everything is fine. I'm home."
Arthur winced, he wasn't sure what it was, but somehow the way that Peter said 'home' seemed insulting. There was no noticeable difference in his tone or vocal expression, but that one word sounded heavy. It almost sounded like the word tasted bad in Peter's mouth.
"Right." Arthur said, "Good, I'm glad. I'll see you after work then, okay?"
"Okay." Peter said and he hung up.
Arthur looked at the phone for a moment. Lukas had certainly given Peter back, but somehow Arthur felt like he hadn't given all of Peter back. Did they hurt him? Beat him? Worst? What sort of twisted people were they? What had they done to Peter?
Nothing apparently. Extensive questioning over dinner revealed that they had mostly played board games with Peter. Somehow, Arthur didn't believe Peter.
Then there was the dog. Peter had come home with a small white dog who he called Hana. Apparently it was Tino's dog. Peter demanded that they keep it. It was the first thing that he had actually fought for. It was the first thing he seemed to have ever felt strongly about to disobey Arthur and Allistor. Allistor gave in first. So, now they had a dog. No, Peter had a dog. The thing followed him around and practically worshiped him.
Great. Arthur wasn't against dogs, but the idea of housing the dog that once belonged to the crazy sniper did not appeal to him.
So, Arthur's life went on. Given the gold mine that Lukas's information had been, tracking down the items and catching their buyers was relatively easy.
But he still came home everyday to a little brother who didn't seem the same.
Emil came home every day to Estonia.
Emil met Estonia the day Peter had gone home and had found that he was named Edward. Edward brought Emil home, fed him dinner, and made up a room for him. Apparently, Edward was to be Emil's guardian in place of Lukas.
And Emil had just met him.
Great. Not really. That was sarcasm. This was really not great.
Emil had nothing against Edward, he was really nice, but rather high strung. Really, it was hard to have something against a guy you just met. As people went, Edward seemed perfectly fine to Emil. The house was nice enough and Edward had no rules that Emil couldn't handle. Of course, he was supposed to go back to school. That didn't sound too great. Over all, they had the unspoken understanding that they were both going to work together to make this work out. This had come as a surprise to both of them, but Emil needed a guardian and Edward wanted to be in the North, so everyone was happy.
Sort of.
There was the whole thing with Lukas and the others going to prison. Apparently, they were in the hands of the city police now, their trials to be held within the next week. Edward said that they could go to all four trials if Emil wanted to. Of course Emil wanted to.
Emil noticed that Arthur was absent from all four trials, but Peter was present for Tino's and Berwald's. The trials were short and to the point. These were dangerous criminals who had been terrorizing the city and mocking the police for nearly a year now. Now it was up to the jury to dish out justice as they saw fit.
Apparently, little brothers left alone in the world didn't factor into the jury's opinion. The jurors didn't think of high school kid's worlds being ripped apart and sent to cement buildings to stare at a wall all day. They didn't think of all of the dinners, Friday game nights, homework problems, and car rides home from school. They didn't think of where this left Emil. What was the justice in that?
One the final day of Lukas's trail, Ludwig broke away from his table and walked over to Emil. The verdict left him cold and mad. Lukas wouldn't look at him.
Ludwig offered him a seal envelope then turned and left. Emil didn't open the envelope until he and Edward had gotten home for the night. Emil locked his door and flopped down on the bed. He just looked at the envelope for a long time before finally deciding to open it.
My Dearest Emil,
I know what you want now is an apology and I also know that this letter not do for you what I intend it to. Please know that we have had no intention of hurting you, though it is clear that we have. The truth is that you are better off without us than with us. However, this is also not what you want to hear. So I will be straight to the point. Even after reading this, you will still be mad at us. You will still be sad, and feel alone. There is nothing I can say that will change that. This letter is an explanation, because we owe you that much.
I will start with after you were arrested. You already know much of this since you sat through our trials, but I wanted to tell you myself.
We knew Vlad had been waiting at the detective agency an hour before the police did. Berwald kept an eye on him all day through the cameras and when Arthur left to go arrest you, I had proposed a vote on what to do. The first option was to try to get to you first and run, the second option was to let you get arrested. In the end, it was three to one, I had wanted to run. When you called Berwald, he told you to go with Arthur because we would be able to watch through our cameras. We thought it best to leave you in the dark about this since there was already so much pressure on you. It was agreed that you would be able to handle yourself in an interview and since you are a minor, it would be all the worst for Arthur if anything were to happen to you.
Mathias and I contacted East and West and hired West as a lawyer with the agreement that if we got off clean, we would break into the city hall for them. This still left the problem of what to do next. It made most sense to go talk to Arthur, like any family would.
Mathias and I tried to get Arthur to let you go, but by then it was clear Arthur thought you were guilty. I thought there might be a chance that you would be able to change his mind, but with all the pressure you were under it was unlikely. Please remember that I am not criticizing you, actually I'm extremely impressed that you didn't crack. However, Arthur is a detective and a very good one at that, you never stood a chance and it's very possible he would have seen through any of us were we in your place.
Since I didn't think that Arthur was going to change his mind, we decided to confirm his suspicions. Kidnapping Peter was a big destination. It did two things for us: First it was a kick in the gut for Arthur, it was intended to make him more determined than ever to catch us, but to shake him enough that he wasn't on his best game, Second it gave us play power. With us holding Peter and us being criminals, Arthur would have no guarantee that we wouldn't hurt Peter, while we knew that Arthur wouldn't dare hurt a minor in custody. He would have no choice but to go with whatever we demanded.
Peter fit in with us surprisingly well. It was a quiet night and he seemed to sense that we were all pretty on edge and unhappy, because he seemed even more energetic and bright than your descriptions. We agreed that since Berwald's house had the best security system, it would be best to keep Peter there.
Peter was a huge negotiation piece, but it wouldn't be enough to get what we wanted. Our goal was to totally clear your name. We talked about this a lot, we came up with a lot of plans and scrapped all of them. It kept coming back to the same problem, Peter in our hands could not get us all we wanted. It was decided that Peter plus us would seal the deal. That meant we would have to get arrested, but it had to be by Arthur's team, or Peter as leverage wouldn't work as well.
For this reason, I demanded that Arthur be kept alive. Another team would not have the personal investment and may not put as much weight in Peter's kidnapping. Plus, we had watched Arthur's team work for so long that all of us were familiar with how they did things. Mathias and Tino wanted Arthur dead and Berwald agreed with me. A two to two vote got us no where. So, it was decided that we would play some cards, the winner would decided Arthur's fate. We planned out everything for after our arrest, including the phone calls to signal to you Peter's release. I knew you would figure out how to check everyone's house, but I messed up the bike tires and canceled your bus pass to try to slow you down and give us the time to try to work with Arthur.
When we contacted Arthur, he was alone and we already knew what he would do.
He came to the safe house backed by the city police, but he came inside alone. Tino had developed a dislike for Arthur while talking with Peter and was more trigger happy than I've ever seen him. However, Berwald won and Tino stood down. Still, Tino got Arthur to order your release.
None of us cooperated with Arthur's questioning, we couldn't until we were sure that we had enough leverage to get all of our demands met. We didn't know what was going on when we were all assembled in one room with the radio we had given Vladimir. Arthur had heard you when you were trying to contact us and had seen it as an opportunity to get us to talk.
Listening to you made up my mind. This was the leverage we needed. Arthur was still human and mental torture was clearly hurting him as much as it hurt us. I made a deal with Arthur, he would not turn over the evidence that would convict you to the police, in return we would give back Peter and I told him all of the information he wanted about the North.
From there, we were taken to the police and you've gone to Estonia.
I want to make it perfectly clear that you being arrested was a bit of a reality check for all of us. For the first time, I understood what it was that we were doing to you. We were robbing you of your childhood and your future. Neither of those things can be returned once they have been lost. You've been trying to grow up so fast, that you are missing the moment you actually live in. When I saw Arthur walk in to the station with you in cuffs, I promised myself that I would do everything I could to return your future to you, even if I couldn't return your past.
You are a very clever person, I'm sure you already knew that we did all of this solely for you, but I wanted to tell you myself. I know you are properly mad at us right now. You think we are selfish blockheads who didn't look at the situation from your perspective. You aren't wrong. However, I am your guardian and we are all the adults in your life. I don't take advantage of either of those positions often, but now was a time when I believe that it was my responsibility to put you in the best position. I hate to say that we know what is good for you, but in this case it's true. I hate to make this sort of decision, we all wanted to consult you, but there wasn't time. Even as I write this, the only thing I regret is making you cry.
I hate trying to be the parent to you, I've always just wanted to be your brother. Circumstances are they are, that wasn't possible. For that, I am sorry.
Arthur probably thinks that since his justice is served, he won this round. In my eyes we won. Our goal was to get you out of the underworld and clear your name of our mistakes and we did that.
Please understand that we want the very best for you. You are intelligent, kind, and a good person and you have such a bright future. I want you to take full advantage of that.
I hate myself sometimes for stealing your childhood and dragging you into the North. I wish I could go back and keep it all a secret from you. However, we needed you and we still do. If you have ever thought yourself inadequate, the failure of the North; you never were or will be.
Please Emil, this is your chance to start fresh. This is your chance to figure out who you want to be and where you want to go. This is your freedom. Your independence.
Always remember that you can come visit me in prison, although I would rather you didn't. I don't want you to be apart of this world anymore. Also remember, I love you.
Your Big Brother,
Lukas
Emil folded the letter and tapped it to the wall above his desk.
Life just wasn't fair sometimes. Emil curse all of times someone had told him to trust them. Emil didn't plan on ever trusting adults ever again. This was where trusting Adults got you; alone on the wrong side of locked doors.
Emil flopped back on his bed and promised himself he was never going to cry again.
Happy Hetalia Day! Today the last two chapters of this story are going up! Thank you so much for all of your continued support! If you are unhappy with the ending, I'm sorry but this was always my intention.
