A/N: Well here we are...The real end...I'm really kind of sad to see it go, it's been my little fanfic baby for so long! Thanks a million to all of you have stuck with me, all your kind words have been so greatly appreciated! Time to take that final step with Alfred and Arthur!

"I need you more than you could know and I could never let you go."

Liquor always made the yearning stronger.

And as things currently stood, there was a lot of liquor currently rushing through Arthur Kirkland's veins. He'd somehow wrestled the emerald bottle from the barkeep and was swigging away happily as he ranted in some nonsense tone that no one could quite understand. He teetered dangerously on the edge of his bar stool, hiccuping and shaking the bottle with a vigor in an effort to somehow conjure more precious liquid inside.

In the back of his mind, two opinions warred with a strangely sharp consistency. One was an overwhelming urge to start a fight with the aforementioned barkeep for more of whatever the hell he'd been drinking for the past three and a half hours...And the other was a nearly crippling sense of deja vu.

He pulled his old pocket watch out of his slack's pocket and glanced at the time, nearly a quarter past eight...For some reason he had the feeling as though someone was running terribly late, and it was making him far more irritable than he would have been under different...sober circumstances. He ran a hand through his messy golden hair as his bleary clover eyes bounced around the bar.

That yearning flared as another trickling drop of fiery liquid raced down his throat. It was nearly inexplicable, this feeling. Like he was missing some vitally important information that he'd desperately attempted to commit to his already faulty memory. His thick brows drew together in agitation as he glanced down at the old trinket in his free hand...And then, without thinking, he let the bottle he'd been so lovingly caressing fell from his hands and shatter upon the dingy bar.

"Alright, that's it Kirkland, get your sodding ass out of my bar. I don't have patience to deal with you anymore tonight." Now that was extremely irritating, he was the one paying for that bloody drink after all! He'd been in here providing this man with more than a few pounds, and was now being treated like a run of the mill drunkard!

Just as he slammed his fist down on the bar, nearly slicing his hand on the scattered emerald glass, a rough hand grabbed his shoulder and a low voice chuckled in his ear.

"I thought you Englishmen were supposed to have manners."

There was a strangely familiar American lilt to that voice...Strange since he was quite sure he'd never spent more than a few moments conversing with any of those. And yet, as his bleary clover eyes appraised the man now looking at him with a slightly sardonic smile... Another wave of deja vu rushed over him, though that might just have been a wave of nausea, but either way.

"Who're you...to judge a man just 'cause he's had a few..drinks?" Arthur's hand clenched around the watch he didn't remember he was still holding as he looked up at the taller man, desperately scanning those wide blue eyes for some other hint of recognition. All he could recover was a tickling in the back of his mind.

"Just consider me a...concerned citizen." It was irritating how it seemed that man was having a hard time not breaking down into laughter. "Would you mind accompanying me outside, I have a few things I'd like to say to you...If you don't want anything to do with me after that, then I promise to get you a cab and send you on your way, but you're definitely not having anything else to drink tonight." And for some reason...Arthur didn't particularly want to argue with this strange American fellow, and so he did something he didn't expect he'd ever do.

He stumbled out of a bar on a cold winter's night, without a coat, with a complete and utter stranger.

"So whatdidjya want huh?" In the back of his mind, he hated the way his words slurred together and made a mental note to lay off on the drink in the future. Even if the reasoning behind this drunken spree still remained elusive to him.

"Your name is Arthur Kirkland, right?"

"Yeah, what'sittooya?" He stumbled a bit on the sidewalk, and was more than a little surprised by the strong arms that caught him under his shoulders and steadied his feet.

"Well...you see...I know this is weird, and totally awkward and all...But do you happen to know someone by the name of James Kirkland?" The normally stoic Englishman was speechless for a moment, of all the strange occurrences, he hadn't expected to be questioned about his grandfather by some strange American who'd found him drunk in a bar.

"My Grandfather...Though I don't wanta know how you know 'im...So mind leaving me alone? I have work in the morning and I don't even know what brought me here in the firs' place." And so Arthur began to stumble his way down the street, having attempted to shove the extraordinarily odd American away from him...All he succeeded in doing was making it nearly five feet away before tripping over his own feet and face-planting straight into the unforgiving sidewalk as a pair of college girls giggled by.

It was only a matter of seconds before he was being hoisted to his feet by that damned weird American. And then there was a coat being tossed around his shoulders...It smelled of old leather and a subtle cologne that he couldn't quite name. Another wave of that deja vu nausea combination rolled over him and he nearly fell against that man.

Whose name he'd never quite caught.

"Umm...hate to be rude bloke...But I never did get your name...Or why you're exactly botherin me of all people." He stumbled a forward a bit, falling against the man's chest, it gave him another whiff of that nice and yet still unidentifiable cologne.

"The name Alfred Jones ring any bells?" There was now a strained tone to the taller man's voice, as if was desperately trying to knock some sense into him without actually having to take a sledgehammer to his head and do it the hard way. Once again, the man's brows drew together and he gave the American a long look over.

"I can't say that it does...You do look...faintly familiar though." A strong looking hand reached out and brushed his disheveled hair away from his face, those blue eyes seeming to desperately search his own.

"Just kind of?" Another tone now...Incredulous shock...Something akin to pain, not something he cared to see on such a handsome face...Or at least...It looked handsome right now, even in the orangeish light of the streetlamps.

"Sorry... Alfred right? I'm pretty sure you haven' met you before...Though apologies for my...err...Situation." A hardening of those clear blue eyes as he looked Arthur over in a way that had him torn between blushing and running and tripping the opposite direction. Like he knew every dark secret he'd ever harbored, every whimsically tragic thought that had flitted through his subconscious for the past few months.

When everything had seemed to change and he couldn't remember things properly anymore. When he stopped giving a damn about that asshole Francis that had cheated on him, when he began frequenting this bar on his way home from the office. When he'd never been a heavy drinker before... At first he'd blamed it on an early midlife crisis, but now he wasn't quite so sure.

"Tell me then Arthur, is that a silver watch you're clutching for dear life?"

"Yeah..."

"Let me guess, it has vines around the face, a bit of a crack in the glass and when it ticks you feel like you're missing something?" A flicker of something passed behind Arthur's eyelids...Like a million images trying to pour into the front of his consciousness at once. And again he found himself questioning this increasingly strange reality.

It seemed fragile somehow, like it was balancing on the tiny point of a knife. One slip to either side and pain would be inevitable.

"How do I know you?"

"How do you not?" A newly desperate tone came into the taller man's voice, his hands thumped down on his shoulders, his eyes frantically searching his face. He wasn't sure he'd ever known any man to be so...forward with him. Let alone so passionate to a relative stranger, could have been just some weird American style of flirting, but that was too ridiculous for even him to believe.

It must be a mix up.

"C'mon Arty, think for me. I know this whole thing has been weird, but you told me to be here at this bar...On this day. Remember that? We were at my apartment...And I know it sounds strange, how crazy I must look right now, but you disappeared, but not before telling me to be here." Arthur's head began to pound, so he he broke away from Alfred, trying once more in vain to walk alone into the night.

Naturally, that deep American voice called after him, though it sounded as though it was breaking.

"Please Arthur...At the very least, look at that damned watch and tell me it doesn't remind you of the day we met! I know it wasn't the best circumstances, but I thought...I saw something in you that needed saving, that I wanted to save more than anything else. It was like you were drowning or something. And you were reaching out...And then...Please don't make me tell you what I did for you, it gives me nightmares enough, but I figured since it's you... And I would have been here sooner, but you were so damn specific about the night...Please Arthur...please." He knew without doubt that the man behind me had started to cry during all of that, and it was a fact that bothered him more than it should have.

It was like there was a drumming in the back of his skull, a pounding...So many things trying to escape at once. His eyes were clouding over again, and yet he knew it wasn't from the drink. He was crying now as well, and he still didn't know why, which was perhaps the most torturous thing of all.

So he did the only thing he could do, the only thing that man apparently wanted him to do...

He pulled that watch back out of his pocket and gazed down on it. Sometimes he couldn't remember how he'd even gotten it, only that he'd had it for what seemed likeforever. That sometimes its ticking haunted his dreams...That when it did work he did always feel as if something was missing, though how this man would have guessed that was beyond reason.

His hand had begun to shake and yet that memory, or whatever it was, remained as elusive as ever.

"I'm sorry Al, I just can't remember." Silence for a painfully palpable moment.

"You called me Al." The tiniest glimmer of hope resurfaced in Alfred's clear blue eyes. "That's got to mean you remember something." At this Arthur roughly shoved the taller man away from him, trying for just a moment to find a solid place within his mind. He didn't enjoy thinking in the abstract, and obvious reasons were making it all the more difficult on this frigid evening.

"I-I...I just can't remember. If we do know each other, and I'm quite certain that we don't, then I sincerely apologize. You see, my life's been pretty hectic lately, so I honestly can't remember much to begin with. In any case, it's been a relief up til now. I really am sorry though, you look...you act..It seems like you're pretty concerned about me. And that's something that bothers me, it's making my heart hurt to see that look in your eyes even though I'm sure that I have no reason to hurt like that...And you probably think that I'm a slobbering drunk now, but, well I guess you could say that I am. Not been much else for me. You were right about the watch, making me feel weird..." His clover eyes were beginning to grow a bit damp around the edges, tears even though it was a stupid thing to begin crying over.

Alfred stood there for the entirety of this awkward, and slightly hiccupy speech, his eyes narrowing as he studied the confused Englishman. He'd heard of people forcefully forgetting parts of their life, trying to cover up bad memories and the like, and he could very well understand... But it would be a lie to say that he wasn't bothered by Arthur's not remembering him. It felt wrong to laugh it off and part their separate ways, never to see one another again.

For some reason he couldn't stand that thought.

So the two men stood there in silence for a long moment. The American anxiously chewing at his bottom lip in a nervous habit few new of, and the Englishman frantically trying to wipe away tears that crept out of the corner of his eyes. The traffic of the city began to pick up around them as the seconds ticked by on the clock, and yet neither moved nor spoke. It was a shared breath suspended in the winter night.

And then, for apparently no reason at all, a small smile slid across Alfred's face, his blue eyes visibly brightening as it did so. Who was he to be so miserable anyways? If Arthur couldn't remember him, then it was like having a clean slate, they could just start all over, he could make that strange little Englishman fall for him again and again. It would be simple enough really, and maybe one day, when they were older and wiser, Arthur might break that wall holding his memories back and tell him the whole of all that had happened here.

"Would you like a ride home Arthur?" He held his breath and waited for an answer.

An answer that came almost without hesitation when green eyes locked on the blue so stubbornly locked on them. There, just at the corner of Arthur Kirkland's mouth, a smile began to bloom.

"You know, I would like that very much."

When Alfred slid his arms out of his coat and tossed it about his shoulders, Arthur found himself sneaking a sniff at the warm collar, it was a familiar scent, comforting in a way he couldn't describe. And when he proceeded to toss is arm about him, he didn't protest, and instead pulled closer to him, his arm moving of its own volition to wrap about his waist.

Somehow he felt as he'd been here before.

In his pocket, a soft ticking began.

It was the normally inaudible sound of a heartbeat, and it didn't stop again for a very very long time.

*****xxxx*****

~The End.

A/n: I'm pleased with this, though I'm not sure if it's complete enough for everyone else...I just enjoy leaving a little something to the imagination y'know? I really really hope you all have enjoyed this from beginning to end! And if anyone's well...curious...I've already began another tale for Alfred and Arthur, though it has no connections to this one lol, I do hope you might check it out sometime. Thanks again, really! Much love! :3