For this Chapter:

Character(s), Pairing(s): Britain(/America), Romano, Italy Veneciano(/Germany because who else is it going to be?), Rome, mentions of France and Prussia

Rating: K+

Warnings: Angst: it's USUK. Language: Arthur's got a potty mouth on him whenever I write him. Slash: not as 'DUDE SLASH'y as previous chapters, but it's there. Talk of death and lunatics.

Chapter Summary: In which Arthur tries to understand and fails to comprehend.

A/N: I was fiddling around with my style of writing recently, so it might not read like the rest of my crap. This is another chapter where not a lot happens. ONWARDS. Notes at the end! Enjoy my lovelies!

Chapter Three: Dream of the Ones who came Before (Annie Lennox, Into the West)

The Otherworld was one of those things. It was a constant, a declarative in a world of questions. It simply was, it was there, it was always there, the echo of seconds, the dust curling in the rays of the sun, the aftermath of a sob caught in a kiss.

"Arthur! How do you feel?"

It just was, and what more was there than just being?

"I'm good, thank you for asking."

It existed a split-second out of time with the rest of the world, or so Arthur had come to understand. It was the sense of déjà vu gained when repeating an action that hadn't been done before. It was the reflection and the shadow that had no body, the orbs on a photograph, the smile with no face, the emotions with no names.

"I didn't expect to see you today; Alfred said you were really tired after your birthday."

The Otherworld had been part of his head for twenty-two years, and there was no getting rid of it. Not without ceasing all other things inside his head, anyway, and honestly, he was in no mood to rid himself of the madness that had come with living with Alfred. But love was divine in its madness, so it was a madness he bared with a smile on his face, knowing he was not alone.

"He would. I'm fine, don't worry. I've actually been called in to the Academy to help the new Dean out."

Endless whiteness was iconic of the Otherworld; no colour but shades of white; if he was lucky, he got cream rather than grey. But those days, those shades, they were rare, and he had grown accustomed to the white-washed walls and furnishings of a world in which the living were the dead and the dead just were. They were not living; even in their own world, the Ghosts were merely that; remnants of a life lived and lost and forgotten. They were solid, at moments of lucidity, incorporeal at moments of madness, but always visible, always tangible.

"You should have been Dean. You were the best Student Council President we had. I was terrified of crossing you, of course, you might have cut the art budget and then the department would never have forgiven me for it, but you were always there to sort our problems out."

The streets always had Ghosts walking familiar routes; to work, to school, marching to their deaths as they fought to defend their lands from the enemy they had yet to encounter. Always the same steps, the same people, the same last moments, a record stuck on its stylus, the same notes skipping and repeating, echoing around his skull and drowning out anything that might be said in a crackle of static. But Arthur had lived with the Ghosts all his life, and so they left well enough alone, on the whole. Some didn't take kindly to his presence, of course, but such was the way.

"Part of me wishes I'd stayed on – not to become Dean, but to just continue my education. But shit happens, so I don't regret it, not really. I can't think what they want me for."

It hurt, sometimes, when they forced their way through his mental barriers to take control, to feel a life denied them. But it wasn't their life to live and it always ended with their consciousness being torn from his body and disintegrated, destroyed, death beyond death.

"Well, I'm sure it's nothing too serious. Tea?"

Some of the Ghosts thought to impart knowledge on him, knowledge that helped him cope with the noise in his head, knowledge that helped him skirt authority to help the Ghosts as they sought to help him. It was a quiet little arrangement they had, but it was an effective one, and had worked for the entirety of his time as a clairvoyant.

"Please."

Of course, knowledge came at a price, and the price tag hung from Arthur's sanity. He was slipping, he could feel it, the ground loose beneath his feet, sometimes not there at all, and he wondered whether the stories were true. Alfred had hinted at knowing the stories himself, though how he'd found them was beyond him; it wasn't exactly public knowledge that eventually, every true clairvoyant took their own life. Whether deliberate or accidental, Arthur had made his peace. One day, he would end his own life, if just to end the noise in his head. Perhaps Gilbert was right about the Gateway, and perhaps it did need to be closed, and perhaps Arthur would have to give himself to end it. But that would take Alfred's life as well, and could he bring himself to do that?

"It's on the house. I'll go make it; two sugars, right?"

It was only after Feliciano Vargas had let go of his arms that Arthur realised the Italian had been holding them. He could feel the warmth of his skin, the calluses on his palms and the rough pads of his fingertips lingering on his forearms, at the crease of his elbow, still see the echo of worry in those brown eyes, but he shook the thought away and crossed to his usual table. It was a table he'd sat at for the twenty-five years he'd lived in Saint Hetalia, a table at which many people had joined him, a table which had seen a lot of homework and held hands and brushed feet, a table at which Arthur had sat and looked out of the glass front of the café and watched the world move on without him.

Because it did. It was a small place, quiet and warm and it always had its doors open to him, and he walked through those doors with the knowledge that the entirety of the building was quiet. Even with the arguments – of which there were plenty, staff and customers alike, and not two weeks ago, hadn't Arthur himself torn Alfred's throat out over something completely asinine and pointless and without grounds for no reason other than he could? – it was quiet, a reprieve from a world in which Arthur didn't fit. Oh, he had his corners and his niches and his reasons, but he didn't fit out there, with the big wide world. The little cottage at the edge of town with its dark woods and its spiders and the big, old oak tree blocking most of light from his bedroom, that was the only place he belonged, that was the only place to call home.

The tea was set in front of him, and as the steam curled from the heavy mug, he looked up to thank Feliciano, only to see someone he didn't expect.

"Why is it," he mused, as he gestured for the other to take a seat. "That people I'm convinced are dead keep coming back to haunt me?"

To which Romulus Vargas laughed. He looked a lot older than his years, his temples greying and his face lined with an age that had sprung up on him seemingly overnight. He'd been ill, so Arthur had been told, some illness of other. With the stiff way his elder moved, Arthur thought he might have been shot. His hands shook a little as he set his own mug on the table and sat in the chair opposite his younger.

"You're thirty now, aren't you?" he asked, and there was nothing old about the grin on his face.

"I am," Arthur replied, trying to ignore how he had to be half Romulus' age at least, and yet his hands were trembling as if he had a palsy rivalling Romulus' own. He chewed his lip for a second. "Where have you been? I haven't seen you for months – hell, years."

"Thirty's a good age to be," Romulus mused absently, frowning over Arthur's shoulder, "Old enough to know better, young enough not to care."

"Rome," Arthur said abruptly, cutting the other's reminiscing of times gone by off at the head. "You've made a deal with Alfred, haven't you?"

"Maybe, maybe not. It's not your business."

"Bullshit is it. The phone calls to my landline. They're terrifying Alfred – they're terrifying Francis – and you know something. I want to know what."

Romulus' eyes slid over to him. "What would you do with the knowledge, Mister Kirkland?" he asked, something like mockery in his voice. "What would you do knowing what I and my grandsons know? What would you do if you had knowledge straight from Eden itself?"

"Don't play games with me, Romulus," Arthur snapped. "I'm not a fool, and I'm not scared of you or your family's business. It will take more than religious mumblings to scare me into silence."

"They want your head," he said. The other side of the room, Lovino's voice snapped, Grandfather, don't! but Romulus carried on with an amendment of, "Well, more precisely, they want what is inside it."

"A cult?"

"Perhaps. I was unable to identify them fully." He sat back in his chair. "Feliciano?"

The boy appeared, his eyes wide and a lip caught between his teeth. His hands fluttered for a second, touching at his grandfather's temple, at his neck and shoulder and straightening the lines of his shirt's collar. "What is it?" His hands were trembling as well, Arthur noted, and revelled in the contrast of the warm olive skin and the crisp white of the cotton.

"The icon, can you draw it for Arthur?"

"Yes, let me just – I'll be right back."

When he'd vanished beyond the counter, Romulus sighed. "I wish he would put his mind to a more practical use. There is a genius in there somewhere, between the pictures and the food and the love."

"He does well with it all the same," Arthur shrugged, and took a sip of his tea. Feliciano made good tea, he decided, and resolved to send Alfred his way that he might learn it too. "Why do you suppose I might be able to identify them?"

"Because they may already be in that pretty little head of yours, and if they are, you have a head start on them – ha-ha, no pun intended. I promised Gilbert that I would care for you as my own, and I always keep my word."

"You've done a great job so far," Arthur replied, and sarcasm became warmth somewhere between his brain and his teeth, because the Roman had, hadn't he? He'd kept Arthur alive, whether by direct contact, or his own dealings with others, he'd kept the dangers localised to Arthur's own head, and that was more than Arthur could have asked for, if he'd thought to seek help for dangers he really ought to have known existed. He'd kept Arthur out of prison for manslaughter, for murder, kept him safe inside from the outside, got him on parole earlier than what Arthur thought to be legal, and why hadn't Arthur thought anything of it at the time?

Romulus snorted with laughter, and took a dignified sip of his own drink. "Sometimes I wonder why Gilbert liked you so much, and I wonder why Francis too cares for you more than he will ever say. I certainly question how Alfred came to love you as much as he does, but then I look at your eyes, and I look at your smile, and I think I understand why."

"I don't understand." If there had been a smile on his face, it was gone in place of a frown.

"I'm dying," Romulus said. "Burning from the inside out, so they say. I have less than a year left, I think, and my boys are going to pick up where I left off, and I have to wonder why you're the centre of this world, why everything has to include you, whether you mean it to or not. And I think I understand why. You are of the earth herself, Arthur, and that is why."

"I never thought I'd hear something so heathen come from your mouth."

"I'm too old to care," Romulus dismissed. "I have been around for far too long to care about what religion really means. But you, Arthur, the boys will do all they can to honour my family's promise to Gilbert, and they will protect you until the day you die, but our deal with Alfred is something to which you cannot be privy."

Arthur was silent for a minute, trying to decipher the message he was sure lay hidden under Romulus' words, but his musing was interrupted by Feliciano's reappearance, this time with his brother at his side. Lovino was an angry sort, all scowls and hisses where Feliciano was wide grins and laughs, and Arthur didn't doubt for a second that he was prepared to kill someone with the towel slung over his shoulder.

"Is this right?" Feliciano asked, putting a ring-bound notebook on the table and turning it so Romulus could see.

"That's right, yes. Arthur, if you would."

Feliciano spun it to face Arthur, who frowned at it.

"A circle in a square, in a triangle, in another circle?" he asked, tracing the pattern.

A static shock jolted his arm and he whipped his hand away from it.

"It's alchemy," he told them, rubbing his knuckles and frowning. "It's called 'squaring the circle'; it's used in the creation of the Philosopher's stone. But it's utter lunacy – there's no such thing, regardless of what alchemy really exists, it isn't possible to create eternal life, nor turn lead to gold. They're insane," he concluded, finally looking up into the confused and sceptical faces frowning back. "Whoever these people are, they're insane."

"But they know about you," Romulus told him calmly, taking another sip. "And they know what lurks in the depths of your mind. That alone speaks volumes for them, don't you think?"

"You think they're scientists?"

"I think they are a force to be reckoned with, and I cannot be sure they are entirely human. If you'll excuse me."

The world washed white for a second, and the Ghosts laughed delightedly as Romulus disappeared into the back room behind the counter, Lovino following instantly. Feliciano lingered for a moment, seemingly on the verge of saying something, and then followed his brother and grandfather.

Go to the Church of your fathers. Remember the loose flagstone there? By the door? The one we used to hide letters under? Put a ward on it, hide it under the stone, make it your safe place. Call them to you, Arthur, but keep from becoming what they are.

It was his own voice whispering on the shell of his ear, and he sat there long after his tea had gone cold and the world narrowed to a single warm terracotta tile some twelve feet away, trying to work out what he'd meant by that.

++End Chapter++

NOTES::

I think with Arthur tearing Alfred's throat out, I was going for a 'going for the jugular' sort of thing. Christ only knows. Guys? Are any of you offended by how much I blaspheme? For a Brit, my repertoire of cursing is surprisingly small, especially considering I can swear in fourteen languages.

Rome's pushing sixty. He and his son were young parents, what can I say? I love Rome. Also side-note; the Mafia is really interesting – I was given a book about it, like, three years ago, and I've only just got around to reading it.

The philosopher's stone was originally used in turning lead into gold, but later became associated with an elixir of life – it was used, originally, to rejuvenate, but the hunt for it soon became a hunt for the secret of eternal life. Alchemists are mad bastards – so's Voldemort, but that's neither here nor there, really. Info on the P.S. taken from Wikipedia, FYI, because I'm too lazy to go and find a book about it – I'm sure there's one somewhere in my house. I've got the book on Angelology and all the astrology books, and my mum's got all the books on Celtic mythology, but can I find the one on Alchemy? No. My brother's probably got it; he's got a book about hunting trolls. I was looking for an icon to use for the 'cult', and I happened across that one, so I read up on it. /rant

Well, that's that! I hope you've enjoyed, my lovelies, and it's about to get darker now there's a new plotline for me to play with! ++Vince++