Disclaimer: Chapter Nine is up. I am tired from typing all night, but it was worth it. You know what else is worth it? Telling you that I don't own Hetalia or Alice Isn't Dead again and that they're owned by Hidekaz Himaruya and Joseph Fink respectively, so I can finally go to freakin' sleep.
Alfred hadn't been home for months. It was weird how when you're gone for a long time, the things you leave behind are exactly how you left them. Alfred knew that didn't sound like it was weird, it was just something that one would expect from inanimate objects, but it actually happened. It was weird.
He thought about the him that left those things in those places, and everything that had happened to him since, and it didn't track. It didn't feel possible, even though it wasn't just possible, it was unavoidable. People would always live in the remnants of the life they've led up until this point, making do with whatever they left for themselves.
Neighbors would want to know where Alfred had been, friends would be worried, but he had pushed away friends and shut out neighbors after Arthur's death, and there was no one left to know or care except Feliciano.
Alfred did the best to return to routine, and Feliciano did his best to match. It felt like play acting, portraying the role of themselves, and they weren't even doing a good job of that.
There was, as always, a jumpy fear in Feliciano. He felt watched. He felt threatened. But he could not specify how. He never saw anyone watching him or Alfred. It didn't matter how many times he woke up in the middle of the night, gasping and sobbing from nightmares, clinging onto Alfred and turning on the lights. There was never anyone there.
Feliciano could not prove it to himself, but he did not feel safe. He did not feel like he had escaped. And then one night, three weeks after he had moved into Alfred's old home, he heard a sound while Alfred was sleeping. Like haphazard clapping, skin slapping skin arrhythmically. Adrenaline surged through him, and he shook with it. But he crept through the dark house toward the noise.
Slap, slap! Slap, slap!
He was around the corner from the living room when, in the reflection of the TV, he saw a shape he could not immediately interpret. A strange bent shape, moving in a loose and weird way.
Feliciano smelled tilled earth. He smelled his own sweat, and it smelled like cleaning chemicals and gas stations.
"Whoop!" the shape said. "Whoop!"
Slap, slap! Slap, slap!
Around the corner of the living room, with just one eye, Feliciano leaned. Just a quick peek.
It was the Tribulus man, of course it was. Not the one that had followed Feliciano, not the one that led him and Alfred to their secret home, but another one still. He was bent grotesquely backwards, like his spine was broken, and he was loosely swinging his arms back and forth in a circle so that they slapped his chest and his back.
Slap, slap!
He gurgled.
"Whoop!" he shouted. "Whoop!"
Feliciano ran back to the bedroom knowing full well that the Tribulus man could hear him now, slammed and locked the door, and fell into Alfred's arms. Feliciano cried, he cried, and he told Alfred everything in short gasping breaths, and they held each other as tightly as if they were trying to fuse into one being, and the sound stopped. They waited for the door to break down, waited for death to come laughing at them in their face, but nothing else happened, except, eventually, morning.
But that was only the start of it.
Even then, Alfred and Feliciano tried to live their life. But what else could they do? Alfred had spent years afraid that each day would be the day he died, terrified of mortality, and that had many downsides, but it did teach him how to push through fear, how to live on even as inside he might be sobbing.
He bought groceries, made dinners with Feliciano, found out that Feliciano actually brought a very large sum of money that could sustain them for multiple years with him to America, and started a job search.
No one knew what to do with Alfred's resume. Middle-tier white-collar worker, and then this long stretch as a truck driver, and now back to searching for office jobs.
"Was this, ah, about finding yourself? Job agencies would ask about the strange span in Alfred's work history.
"It was about finding something, sure," Alfred said.
"Mmm… uh, well, we'll call you."
But even as Alfred's routine continued, so did the watchings and warnings.
One evening as Feliciano was showering, Alfred looked out his window to see, on his neighbor's balcony, a smiling Tribulus man. A different one, his grin cracking his face on one side, while the other hung slack.
Alfred panicked. Where were his neighbors? Were they still alive? And if they weren't, what could he do? Call the police? There was no one in this world who could help him.
Footsteps in the house while Alfred and Feliciano huddled together in the bedroom, shivering in fear. Off kilter and dragging, like a wounded animal, in the hours were morning and night mingled.
A car on the block that neither Alfred nor Feliciano had ever seen before, but was now always parked in a place with a clear view of their house.
Alfred was washing Feliciano's hair one night in the shower, when he actually dared to shower. Any sort of vulnerability became a calculated risk. Would it be safe to sleep now? Could he shower with Feli for these few minutes?
And that time he misjudged the moment, because Alfred could feel that there was something with them, in the shower. But he couldn't see anything. That was the thing, nothing was there!
But there was, and both he and Feliciano knew it.
He could smell the mowed grass and fertilizer, could hear between the crack of water on the tub a "Yip! Yip! Yip!"
Alfred turned off the shower, and Feliciano shivered in the cold. No sound. Alfred wrapped Feliciano in a towel and looked all over the bathroom. No one, nothing was there. But something was there! He turned the shower back on, the smell was even stronger, and buried in the sound of the water: "Yip! Yip! Yip!"
Alfred's anxiety was becoming a monster of its own. Now that it had a focus, it was overpowering. He could feel himself shutting down, wanting to do nothing at all, to not get out of bed, to wait for them to take him and Feliciano.
And what were they even trying to warn Alfred and Feliciano away from? They had gone home! They had given up!
And thinking about that, Alfred realized… These were not warnings. His and Feliciano's fates were sealed. This was just them having fun. Playing with them.
Staying home, trying to wait them out until they got bored, that was not an option. Because the ending was preordained.
Alfred thought about trying to disappear, and even spoke to Feliciano about it. Vanishing off the map - or more accurately, driving into the map of America with Feliciano so deep, and so far, that no one would ever find them again.
But each time, they both came to the conclusion that there was a fine line between disappearing from view and disappearing altogether. How far could they run? How much could they change before there was nothing left for them to hide? Before all that was left was the disguise?
There was only one escape, and Alfred talked to Feliciano about it. Feliciano agreed without missing a beat. Feliciano and Alfred would have to be the ones to come after them. They would go where the Tribulus men lived, and confront them there. Only then would it end, one way or another.
Alfred called Bay & Creek. He told them that he was coming back, if that was okay with them. But he would have to plan carefully with Feliciano. Even one of those things was powerful, and there were so many of them! To just rush in would be death. Or… Alfred didn't know what. Everything worse than death, Feliciano supposed.
Feliciano thought that there had to be some pattern to their comings and goings. Even monsters, or… whatever these things were, they had to have some routine to their lives. If they had any hope of destroying them, let alone surviving, Feliciano figured that he would have to know that routine better than they did.
They would build a hidden lean-to on the hill above their town, would disappear into it with food and water, and probably a bucket. Gross, but it's what they'd have to do, most likely. This would have to be done carefully and slowly, or it would not be done at all.
And then, all of that changed. Because there was a knock at the door.
Feliciano glanced at Alfred, who hadn't noticed, and was typing away at the laptop, an intense expression on his face. Feliciano went to the second floor, and leaned out the window to see who was there.
No one. Just a piece of paper, the wind gently nudging it off the porch.
Feliciano went down, reached his arm out, grabbed the paper, and held the door locked again as quickly as he could.
On the paper was an address, written in a scrawl with a pen that barely had any ink left, more carved into the paper than written. It took Feliciano a moment to even register what he was seeing, and then he was telling Alfred, and they were on the road driving south.
There would be no watching, no planning. They had grabbed random items they figured would be useful. Alfred and Feliciano were going to… Alfred didn't know. Feliciano guessed that they were going to drive the truck full speed through the front gate. What would they do after that? Feliciano didn't know. The paper had an address on it, for an Extended Stay America, with a room number.
Feliciano called Peter. He picked up, thank God. Feliciano told him that he needed to start running again, that they found him.
Fast forward a few days, and there they were.
They were facing the gates, the engine was running, and the headlights were off.
Feliciano took deep breaths, and Alfred sighed, running his hand through his hair.
"Okay. Okay." Alfred sighed again. "This is it, I guess."
Feliciano gulped and nodded, eyes staring straight ahead. "Yeah. Whatever happens next, happens."