Walking down memory lane

"C'mon, dinner is ready! Hurry up or it will get cold!"

Contrary to what was France's routine every time they had dinner all together, England, America and Canada quickly left what they were doing to sit by the campfire and get their serving of fish stew.

"Is it the fresh air of the woods what makes you so obedient? If that's the trick, we should really do this more often~" France teased, as he started to hand out the food. "It would be nice not reheating everything each and every time."

"We definitely need to do this more often, but it's your soup that really smells great." Canada took enthusiastically his bowl of soup and quickly dug into it, as if he hadn't eaten in ages. "And it tastes great too!"

"Not to brag about it, but I have to admit it turned out quite well~ Fresh fish makes the difference."

"Not to brag about it, you say, but this looks like bragging to me." Canada snickered and then he focussed on his food, feeling the familial moment warming up his heart as much as the soup warmed up his body. "Well deserved, though."

"I really wanted to catch a big fish to roast it on the fire..." America sulked. "Canada's right, though, you really saved it!"

France chuckled, whilst Canada just raised a doubtful eyebrow at his brother.

"I'm right more often than not, to be fair."

England stopped his quiet eating to interrupt the two American nations' quarrel before it started, reprimanding them both and making them focus back on their soup. France observed amused the squabble and then shoved England with his shoulder.

"Don't you have anything to say about the soup?"

"I'm not saying anything, this should already be enough for you."

"Does it mean that you like it?"

"It does mean that I don't hate it." England cut short as he looked away from France to hide his blush, unwilling to contribute to his husband's already room filling ego. "And I'd like to have my phone back. I need to check that the mess at home hasn't gotten out of hand."

"Well, you're not going to get it." France pouted, annoyed by England attempt to brush off the half compliment he had given him. "I said that we need to relax and that's precisely what we are going to do. Moreover, our people can handle whatever problem well enough by themselves."

"Our people? Not our sovereigns?" Canada asked dubiously. "Who have you left in charge of your things back at home?"

"The Unions, of course~"

All of sudden, the rest of the family felt much more worried about the hexagon than about their own countries. Still, France seemed so unconcerned about the potential risks of leaving his country unsupervised, that they felt unwilling to keep discussing the topic.

"For how long were you planning to stay in Ohio?" America took his chance to ask. "We've all been dragged here, but it looks like you gave it some thought."

Contrary to their expectations, France focussed back on his soup, looking suddenly bashful and unwilling to answer.

"Love?" England's attempt to get his attention back on him didn't earn him a better answer.

His reaction caught everyone else unprepared, so they silently resumed eating while they waited for France to explain.

"Do you guys remember the Indian wars?" France sighed, eventually deciding that he had no reason not to answer his family.

"Is that a new game?"

"He's talking about the wars France and England fought in Asia when we were children." Canada explained, huffing in disappointment at his brother's ignorance on the matter before focussing back to his parents. "I remember that at a certain point, at the time, you two came back all of sudden one day and took us here. You were referring to that, weren't you?"

"Yeah... You know, those wars... Well, it was a bad period for England and me."

"Bad is quite the euphemism, I hated that period." England sighed at the memory. "I'm used to be at peace or at war with someone, but at the time I couldn't understand where I was standing with France. It was utterly mental, I couldn't make sense of neither the wars nor the peace treaties, and the fact that he already was my lover didn't make things any better."

"It was the same for me. They kept giving me orders I couldn't understand, even if all I wanted was to discuss our latest discoveries with England." France's lips pursed in a small smile that hardly clashed against the sad and nostalgic expression he was wearing. "He might not look like it, but England is a wonderful sounding board on scientific topics, and I wanted to understand more of those places-"

"Discoveries?" England scoffed, attempting to look annoyed after the indirect compliment that had made him blush an even darker shade of red. "I would say plainly made up stuff in some cases."

"That's so completely unfair!"France frowned, finally looking up from his soup to glare properly at his husband. "I gave you the real news first and then I helped you using that information for your own interest! I never said that what I made up in the end was true in the first place: you were the one who just took it and used it without any official credit!"

"What credit was I supposed to give you? Not even my government fully knew what the hell we were doing in Asia!"

"Well…" France coughed in fake modesty, averting his eyes from him. "A personal thank you of some sort would have sufficed-"

"That I did." England interrupted him, smirking secretively at his husband as he tried to meet his gaze. "And as far as I remember, you were quite satisfied with-"

"Dads!" Both American nations cut into their parent's banter before the debate moved into a not safe area for them both, earning France's annoyed pout and England's amused grin at his displeasure.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Considering how vague had been America's question, Canada soon hastened to clarify the topic for their safety.

"And we are not meaning the rewards dad England gave you."

"We kept exchanging information on everything we discovered, at the time: literature, history, culture, science, technology..." France explained, unable to hide the melancholy he felt rising in his chest as the memories of the time slowly came back to him. "It's not like we even tried to hide it, if you look at our works from that time there are a lot of plain cross references, not to mention our foreign politics feeding off the very same info, no matter who had discovered it first."

"Yeah, when people don't want to see something you can very well leave it in plain sight. You rise fewer suspicions like that than attempting to hide."

"I still can't believe that you basically played the happily married couple of explorers while you were at war with one another." Canada shook his head in disbelief. "And even less that this is something you didn't even try to hide."

France and England exchanged a quick glance, huffed and then just shrugged.

"I doubt this can be considered news by anyone who cared to watch our doings closer. For how many wars we fought against one another, no dispute ever actually divided our common interests."

"Or us, to be more precise." France added to England's statement, leaning against his side to get his attention back on him.

As their eyes lingered on one another's, though, they realised that they had indeed to reveal something more about that specific time, at least to their children.

"That's why we couldn't understand what the hell we were doing at the time." England took after France's explanation, feeling more than just a little annoyed, as he had to force himself to remember the madness happening at the time. "I used the information he gave me to get a better hold of India, what was the point in fighting him to keep him off the place?"

France couldn't hide a hint of shame at the reminder of how their discoveries had been used at the time, so England allowed himself to thread his fingers through his soft hair as a silent way to comfort them both, before looking back to their children and continuing the explanation.

"That's why we eventually fled the conflict for a while and brought you two here. We needed to act on our own logic for a while, and our logic told us that our family had priority over anything else."

"It had been already hard leaving you alone in America, staying away from you only to keep on some useless fights was too much for us in the end." France allowed himself a quiet laugh. "I mean, I'm not someone who will ever turn down the chance to fight against England, but there are better reasons to do so and especially sweeter ways to claim victory or defeat at the end of the confrontation."

"Please, we don't want to hear that." America sighed, as he actually started to remember what had happened at the time. "You told us that we were playing a game back then, or am I wrong?"

"We literally escaped at the time, we didn't even bothered to give our sovereigns some weak excuses as we did when we crossed the ocean the first time by ourselves." France admitted, lowering his eyes as he started to move around some leftover broth inside his bowl with his spoon. "England managed to sneak into my ship one night and we fled on his boat to the nearest harbour. From there we took another ship that couldn't be linked to either of us back to America, travelling in incognito."

"So the hiding game-"

"Was in truth us trying to escape our sovereigns without you children knowing." England concluded, as he finally understood what France meant by bringing up the Indian wars. "We're going into hiding the same way we did back then, aren't we? That's why you switched off and confiscated the phones."

"Last time, we stayed here until they found us, but I don't think that now we can allow ourselves a vacation that long…" France explained, nodding to England. "Still, I wouldn't mind to at least buy us enough time to finish off what we started."

"I don't remember us starting anything we didn't finish at the time."

"We found this, don't you remember?" France took out from his jacket a scroll made of something that looked like leather. When he unravelled it, it showed something that had all the likes of a map.

America immediately recognised it as a map of the area, but the strokes were so sketchy that not even he could actually make sense of them. It showed ways that he wasn't sure actually existed in the current settings and also the lakes, rivers and trees looked very different from what he would have expected.

Together with the outline of the area, there were also a big dark X and some circles of different colours placed on different areas of the map, but the legend at the foot of the piece of leather just added colours to it, giving no explanation at all. It was hard to tell if it was still incomplete by the time France had gotten it or if time had slowly erased the ink, but it was undeniable that there was no way to tell what the clues were meant to show.

"I do remember that treasure map." England realised shocked. "Didn't we come to the conclusion that it was a dead end?"

"To be fair, I kept looking into it without any success." France sighed. "After internet and online information became a thing, I also asked Japan's help to try figuring out where this map would lead to, but it looks like no one found anything particular in the area. It's a completely anonymous square of wild forest on any blog, book and research I read."

"Maybe because it is, and there isn't anything to see here." England countered, crossing his arms over his chest. "Or whatever there was, it already disappeared. How many years passed since the Indian wars? Two centuries? And the map could date even earlier than that."

"I still think that following the treasure map might be something nice to do as a family. You know, to forget whatever is happening lately and have a good time together… Moreover, I'm quite curious to see where it will lead us."

"A treasure hunt sounds so cool! Let's-" America stopped abruptly himself as he heard the sound of a helicopter flying over the area approaching. "Have they already sent someone searching for us?"

"Let's hide!" England stood up hastily and took a firm hold of his husband's forearm to drag him back on his feet and direct him towards the depth of the woods. He signalled to America and Canada to follow them and then pushed France towards an area with several depths in which they could hide.

"They will spot the camp eas-"

"Shh!" England interrupted brusquely his lover, leading him and the boys down a deeper depth in which they huddled closer together. "They will luckily think us smarter than we are."

"Smarter?" America asked, hiding in France's arms no differently than what they had done in the same situation when he was just a child.

France closed his arms around him and dragged him closer, before staring up worried at England.

"You hope that they will think the camp is a decoy, you mean?"

"Yeah, I'm counting on them searching the camp and finding our smartphones." England explained, dragging Canada closer to him as he moved closer to France. "We can only wait here and hope that they will fall for it."

"But if they take our smartphones away, how will we get back?" Canada asked confused, taking advantage of his naturally low tone of voice. "We would have no emergency numbers, no gps, no internet search..."

France chuckled and reached out to him with his hand to caress his cheek reassuringly.

"We'll get you guys back the same way we did last time, mon chou. Trust us on not needing any phone to survive in the wild, we have everything we need with us and in our brain."

Canada nodded, but he didn't look any happier as he stole an annoyed glance at his brother, who had already started dozing off safe into France's arms.

"Someone is way less worried than he should be."

England laughed quietly at the scene and pushed lightly Canada towards his lover to make him join America in France's embrace. The older nation welcomed Canada as well, easily tightening his hold around the two boys to offer them both comfort and warmth.

England allowed himself to fully enjoy the feeling of having his family close together like the old days, but the small familial moment ended sooner than expected. The approaching helicopter eventually landed and, after some time, they heard some heavy steps as someone walked in their direction.

England moved instinctively over France to hide in the best way he could the other three nations in the off chance that they were found, and all of them held their breath, waiting for the newcomers to hopefully give up on them and move on.

As the minutes went by, England felt his position difficult to keep, so he lowered himself enough to shift his weight on France's legs.

"Ouch!"

"Angleterre? Did you hurt yourself?"

"I didn't, I just put my hand onto something hard."

"A rock?"

"Something small." England sat fully on France's legs, so that he could show the culprit to him. "It looks like flint."

"Dad... This is Ohio." America yawned. "Of course it's flint."

"It's kind of beautiful, though." Canada made himself more comfortable in his French father's embrace as he stared at the pebble. "The broken side is all shiny blue."

"Yeah, it's cute. We might bring it home as a souvenir." France took the rock in his hand and let his thumb run over the smooth surface. "Feels like it has been carved, it's not just casually broken in half."

"What?" England retrieved the rock from France, but it was difficult checking it properly in the dim light of the falling night. "We'll check it better tomorrow. Now let's all be quiet, I'm still hearing noise coming from the camp."

Each moment felt too long, but neither of them dared to move to check their watches and confirm if those were hours, minutes or barely moments. Luckily, it was already dark and, as the night became darker, the people searching for them seemed to come to the conclusion England was hoping for.

The English nation climbed up the dune just enough to reassure himself that the way was finally clear but, in doing so, he hit a thin branch popping out the ground, snapping it in half. The sudden noise echoed in the deep silence of the night and drew the soldiers' attention back on them.

Before they could uncover their hiding spot, however, France had enough presence of mind to signal Pierre to grant them a distraction. The bird, who lately contented himself to follow France and to perch himself happily on the branches together with his kind, quickly reacted and rushed out of the woods with several other birds, attempting to make as much noise as possible.

Predictably, the soldiers deemed the storm of birds responsible also for the snapped branch, and so they u-turned back to their helicopter.

"They are going away." England updated his family, and then sat back on France's legs to face him. "Was that your Pierre?"

"Yeah. When they will share information with my sovereigns the trick might be easily uncovered, but at the moment there's enough turmoil in France that finding me is at the bottom of their interests."

"Don't tell me that you left the unions in charge hoping for a mess to happen."

"No." France answered seriously, looking way more relaxed than he was supposed to. "I left them in charge because making a mess was the right thing to do, and I trust my people not needing help on that."

England stared several moments at him and then sighed.

"I love you." was the only thing he had the heart to say, mostly to remind himself of that truth.

France crooked slightly his head to the side, not really understanding the reason behind England's declaration of love. Eventually, he just smiled at him, deciding to accept his words for their actual meaning, without bothering too much about the details.

"Je t'aime aussi~"

Since no request to get a room had come until then, France and England turned their attention back on their boys, only to find them deeply asleep against France's sides. The sight made both nations smile warmly, before they stared once more in one another's eyes. "This reminds me of something."

T.B.C