[fan fic] Prisoner
Title: Prisoner
Characters/Parings: America and Canada
Rating: PG-13 or 14-A
Warnings: Very dark fic, violence, death, speculative future, angst by the bucketload.
Summary: Based on the Vocaloid song Prisoner and the Opening Heaven's Gates series. Companion to Paper Planes.
Alfred F. Jones had spent more than two-thirds of his life in the barracks of United Russia. He’d been captured with his parents in the satellite state of Ukraine before he was five, accused of being rebels against United Russia’s regime in Eastern Europe. An old family friend, Yekaterina, stole him away and hid him for nearly two weeks in the basements of fellow rebels before they, in turn, were caught and a man who Yekaterina called her brother took her away.
(“Shhh, it’s a game of hide and seek. If you win you can go to Western Europe and see Uncle Arthur again. You remember him, right?”
“He’s from the meetings mama and papa have sometimes. But what if I lose?”
“You mustn’t lose,” Yekaterina had answered grimly, lips set in a severe line instead of the usual soothing smile Alfred had so loved. For the first and last time of his life, Alfred saw the scars that criss-crossed the woman‘s face and the missing portion of her left leg and understood that she was not just his playmate and nurse. She was a fighter.)
But Alfred hardly remembered the days before then. Just hazy discussions in shadowed rooms lit only by cheap candles and dim lights, talks of getting more people to the cause and would violence work where peaceful protests hadn’t? His first truly clear memory was being told by a tall man in a scarf that his parents were gone, and the smile that had come at the sight of his tears. Now all he could remember was being worked until his fingers bled in the prison’s garden and then graduating to hard labour once he was old enough.
The teen lived on stories he heard from his fellow prisoners. Some were soldiers who’d tried to sabotage the onward march of United Russia, and they described the courage of the people from the northern regions of the United Continent of North America.
(“I thought that most of the UCNA was destroyed,” Alfred replied, ignoring how strange it felt to say such a thing.
“The lands were bombed, sure, but most the northerners went to the Western European Alliance. You know it’s them ‘cause they still wear a red leaf on their uniform, even when the others only wear the circle of stars.”)
Others were historians, who knew stories from even further into the past. Alfred devoured them, particularly the stories of the former nations the United States of America and Canada. He felt as though many of the American heroes were old friends, and he had an understanding of how deeply the two nations were connected that astounded most of the scholars who talked to him. It was from these great men and women that Alfred learned to read and write, albeit not very well.
When Alfred entered his teens he began to experience vivid dreams that were so real he would swear they were memories. But in these memories he was hardly even a child, and the place he was in was vast and open and he tasted freedom with every breath. There was another there, too. A boy whose face was almost exactly like his, who Alfred played with from sunup to sunset. Those dreams, of the boy who Alfred thought was his little brother, gave him a new flickering joy inside him. It was bittersweet, but those dreams gave him something happy to hold on to.
Alfred sent his first paper airplane when he was about fifteen. It was sent on a clear, breezy afternoon with stolen paper, the scrawl it bore messy and the spelling abhorrent. It took him three tries to send it over the high barbed-wire fence. The intended receiver almost didn’t get it. It was someone who wore white, and only white, and looked rather weak from Alfred’s position on one side of the fence. He caught sight of the paper caught in the dry, dead weeds and retrieved it. He opened the letter and read it on the spot. Alfred was too far away to see the expression of whoever had gotten the plane, and so he waited in the gravel and watched the person who’d received the letter walk away.
("Fine, fine, fine. I promise. You know I'll always love you best. Can I go now? I need to make dinner." The words made Alfred swell with joy, because it meant that no matter what he could count on his brother‘s love.)
Alfred cried out in frustration, nearly shook the metal fence in anger. He’d seen whoever was dressed in white pass by the fence every day for nearly four days, now, and had thought it would be alright to try and contact that person. When he realised the guards of the prison would notice him right away if he was leaning against the fence talking to someone, he decided that sending a note would be best. He even convinced one of the younger inmates to show him how to make a paper airplane and teach him to fly it properly. He’d stolen paper and a pencil in order to write the note, and had been painstaking in getting the letters neat and words properly spelled.
Just when Alfred lost hope, though, he saw the sickly person dressed in white return. The person was shuffling and looked like… he was trying to throw something. It took Alfred a moment to realise that it was another paper airplane. Once the paper finally made it over the fence the person in white left with a feeble wave. Alfred read the page, and then read it again. And again. And again. The words were so achingly familiar, as if an old friend had penned the letter instead of a stranger.
And the stranger in white returned the next day, a second paper plane at the ready. He threw it over the fence after a few attempts and left soon afterwards. It didn’t matter to Alfred. He had all the proof of the stranger’s presence he needed in his hands. That night he wrote his own response, smiling all the while. Already he felt a kinship to the person in white.
Alfred’s dreams continued, to the point that the monochrome world he lived in seemed less real than the vivid, exciting world in his dream. It was so real, so strong, that Alfred could no longer be certain what was existent and what wasn’t.
(“C’mon Alfred! Leave Arthur alone!”
“No way, I’m gonna get him good this time!” Alfred smiled, confident that he would not get in trouble for what he was about to do. And even if he did, his brother would always be there to help him out of it again.)
Soon, Alfred knew that his dream-family was even more precious to him than anyone he knew in the waking world. Except for one person. The someone in white who had visited him every day, bearing a paper airplane and sending it over the fence. Alfred tried to respond as often as he could, but often found himself unable to get the paper needed. He straight-out refused to reuse the paper planes the person in white had sent him. He treasured each airplane and reread them constantly. In the middle of the night when he could not read them, he slept curled around the paper, feeling the warmth of kinship and affection almost emanating from the paper.
But the love from the planes, though strong and desperately needed, was nothing compared to the sheer adoration Alfred received from the twin he had in his dreams. His twin was quiet and gentle and while often opposed to Alfred, he always found a way to help him a little, ease the pain of their quarrels. Whenever Alfred came home hurt, his brother would be there with bandages and sympathy, with the occasional shot of common sense and sarcasm to set him straight again. Even when Alfred left the house that he and his brothers, adopted and blood, lived in his twin was patient and fought against him reluctantly at best.
The best dreams, though, were the ones where Alfred wasn’t fighting, wasn’t worrying, just enjoying spending time with his family. From the way his twin accepted Alfred’s closeness, Alfred’s need to be close, with a light laugh and a shuffle nearer to the way he looked up at him with adoring eyes and easy smiles, Alfred could feel nothing but love for and from the brother that appeared in his dreams. And he got the sense that his twin would do anything for him.
Things took a turn for the worst soon after Alfred’s someone in white announced he had turned sixteen. Alfred’s dreams had changed in scope. In the first ones he was an infant, and there was a sense of a great deal of time passing between the dreams. Now he was a grown-up, and things were getting harder to take. Alfred didn’t understand a great deal of the details surrounding his dreams (being referred to as the former nation America never failed to confuse him) but he understood that somehow he’d ended up in a position of great power. And drunk on this power, he began to make a series of bad choices.
It began with a fit of jealousy. That a black-haired man who Alfred could only feel friendship for was closer to a man who looked startling like Arthur, heavy eyebrows and all, than Alfred himself. He wanted the man who looked like Arthur, and Alfred felt the same even from his position outside all it.
(The order was made in a darkened room, out of sight of cameras or recording devices.
“Ruin the Land of the Rising Sun.”)
Oh, but even worse was what he told his twin to do. His gentle, loving twin who cared for everyone, who wanted peace above all else. Alfred felt horrible after that dream, because he knew he’d done something he could never forgive himself for. He had taken advantage of his brother’s willingness to do anything for him.
(“Please Matt, you have to do this!” Alfred begged, holding his brother’s hand as if it were his last lifeline. The uncertainty on his twin’s face was clear, but slowly it melted away, replaced by a resignation that broke Alfred’s heart to remember.
“I’ll do it for you.” It took Alfred almost three days to realise the full implications of that agreement. That his twin loved him so much, he truly would do anything for him. He’d cried for his cruelty and his brother’s kindness as he worked.)
His twin willing killed the black-haired man that had once been Alfred’s friend. The Land of the Rising Sun (Alfred was told it was Japan, but surely that couldn’t be true. Japan had since been completely wiped off the map, and he would never order its destruction) was bombed into oblivion.
(Alfred remembered seeing his twin, with blood still splattered on his face and hands, in their room cleaning off. He gasped in horror at the sight and his twin replied with, “I’m sorry for startling you.”
That night he could hear the sobs racking his brother’s body while he pretended to sleep.)
The dreams stopped after that. Alfred no longer could find solace even in his old dreams, the ones where things were happy and peaceful. Alfred sought out comfort in the only remaining source he had. His person in white, who was nothing more than a someone Alfred could talk to, could trust. The teen threw all his energy into becoming friends with his someone, did all he could to become a someone to the person in white who visited him every day.
Those paper planes became Alfred’s hope to live. If in his dreams he was cruel and manipulative and selfish, he would make up for it in this world. Eventually, he would get free of his prison, and he would become a person his someone in white could call a brother. He would love his someone so dearly he would do anything. And he would trust this someone enough to not take advantage of such a bond.
Soon. He would escape soon and learn his someone’s name and do everything in his power to make him smile. He just had to wait.
The last paper plane Alfred received was an apology. His someone had to go far away, and he would not be returning. There were apologies and words assuring that the person in white cared deeply for Alfred. But it was not enough.
Alfred had lived through much agony in his life. He’d been worked to the bone, beaten to the point of passing out, only to be awakened and beaten again, and tormented by his own selfishness in his dreams. But nothing could compare to the tears he shed over that last piece of hope he had treasured being snuffed out and smashed. His someone in white was his last hope for redemption, his last hope for a bright future. Even if he escaped, how would he be able to live with himself, without the one person who’d been a brother to him? He couldn’t. Alfred had never felt so trapped in his life.
He spent long hours scouring the prison for any letters he could’ve missed, whiled away the time waiting for his someone in white to return. Nothing.
Even so, Alfred kept the paper planes he’d received. Those were memories that hadn’t been soured. The kinship and affection was still the same, unabused and warm as ever. He held tight to one in particular, the final letter. He avoided those bitter lines about how his someone was leaving. Instead he focused on those last tidy lines, that promised that Alfred would always be remembered and treasured as a brother.
The day after his someone in white left him, Alfred found himself being held down by a pair of guards as a third took the plane from his hands and read it. The man sneered and tore it. For a long moment, Alfred’s heart stopped beating. He watched the shreds of paper flutter to the ground.
(They were coming for him, those who understood that Alfred’s greed had gone far too far. He stood silently, one hand on his window, watching the rain come down and waiting to be captured and given his punishment. Even now he could not bring himself to regret.)
Something in Alfred snapped. He released a feral roar of agony and tore himself free. His left hand clenched around the shred of paper, those last words of love, while his right rushed forward to punch the laughing guard’s face. He was held back by someone from behind as soon as the blow landed, and Alfred sobbed and struggled.
(Alfred was so intent on the rain and the feeling of cool glass under his palm that he didn’t notice his twin until he heard the rustle of heavy cloth. When he turned his brother held the coat around him.
“You have to leave.”)
Alfred’s outburst had earned him a ticket to the chamber where his parents had been slaughtered years earlier. He, a young man that was still strong and as healthy as anyone could get in such a godforsaken place, was sent to his death alongside the elderly, the ill, the infants, and pregnant women. Anyone who was no longer of use to United Russia‘s prison camps.
("Nobody will notice. I already cut my hair. I love you. Please go now, while there's still time.")
When he was thrown into the chamber he could smell death and the sharp scent of chemicals. Cries of despair echoed in the small chamber. Alfred’s emotions almost completely shut down. He was going to die.
(He didn’t beg or plead. Just looked right at the camera, as if he was looking directly at the viewers, and smiled. Smiled! A soft, sweet smile, as if to reassure them, as if to tell them that it would all be okay, that everything was going to be all right… as if he were genuinely, heartbreakingly happy…
And then the shot.)
Alfred had no regrets left. But still, something inside him was screaming. He wanted to live a little longer. To see his someone in white once more. Standing as best as he could, Alfred tried to get to the door. It was desperate, it was foolish, and the doors slammed shut long before he could escape. He pounded on them anyways, hanging his head and letting tears drip down his face.
(The gunshot that ends his brother's life is loud, so loud, too loud, and it works its way into every dream and every thought and every emotion he has, until all Alfred can think about is gunshots--)
Alfred fell to the ground, choking as the poisonous gas flowed into the room. No one was left standing. Blood was leaking from Alfred’s mouth, forming a puddle around his head. His unfocused eyes caught sight of something. A shred of white paper. That last bit of his someone’s love and understanding. He reached out weakly, took it into his hand.
(“England raised me. France fostered me. But you - you, Russia, have taught me how to hate.”)
Stand. He had to stand. He wasn’t going to let himself die lying down, surrendering. He struggled, leaning against the wall and fighting the pain in his chest, his shortness of breath. In vain, Alfred screams, and wants only one thing in his final moments.
("Bang," he whispers, but does not pull the trigger.)
The twin he lost in his dreams, his someone in white. In that last moment they are one and the same, and Alfred begs the heavens to tell him one thing before he dies. His name.
Characters/Parings: America and Canada
Rating: PG-13 or 14-A
Warnings: Very dark fic, violence, death, speculative future, angst by the bucketload.
Summary: Based on the Vocaloid song Prisoner and the Opening Heaven's Gates series. Companion to Paper Planes.
Alfred F. Jones had spent more than two-thirds of his life in the barracks of United Russia. He’d been captured with his parents in the satellite state of Ukraine before he was five, accused of being rebels against United Russia’s regime in Eastern Europe. An old family friend, Yekaterina, stole him away and hid him for nearly two weeks in the basements of fellow rebels before they, in turn, were caught and a man who Yekaterina called her brother took her away.
(“Shhh, it’s a game of hide and seek. If you win you can go to Western Europe and see Uncle Arthur again. You remember him, right?”
“He’s from the meetings mama and papa have sometimes. But what if I lose?”
“You mustn’t lose,” Yekaterina had answered grimly, lips set in a severe line instead of the usual soothing smile Alfred had so loved. For the first and last time of his life, Alfred saw the scars that criss-crossed the woman‘s face and the missing portion of her left leg and understood that she was not just his playmate and nurse. She was a fighter.)
But Alfred hardly remembered the days before then. Just hazy discussions in shadowed rooms lit only by cheap candles and dim lights, talks of getting more people to the cause and would violence work where peaceful protests hadn’t? His first truly clear memory was being told by a tall man in a scarf that his parents were gone, and the smile that had come at the sight of his tears. Now all he could remember was being worked until his fingers bled in the prison’s garden and then graduating to hard labour once he was old enough.
The teen lived on stories he heard from his fellow prisoners. Some were soldiers who’d tried to sabotage the onward march of United Russia, and they described the courage of the people from the northern regions of the United Continent of North America.
(“I thought that most of the UCNA was destroyed,” Alfred replied, ignoring how strange it felt to say such a thing.
“The lands were bombed, sure, but most the northerners went to the Western European Alliance. You know it’s them ‘cause they still wear a red leaf on their uniform, even when the others only wear the circle of stars.”)
Others were historians, who knew stories from even further into the past. Alfred devoured them, particularly the stories of the former nations the United States of America and Canada. He felt as though many of the American heroes were old friends, and he had an understanding of how deeply the two nations were connected that astounded most of the scholars who talked to him. It was from these great men and women that Alfred learned to read and write, albeit not very well.
When Alfred entered his teens he began to experience vivid dreams that were so real he would swear they were memories. But in these memories he was hardly even a child, and the place he was in was vast and open and he tasted freedom with every breath. There was another there, too. A boy whose face was almost exactly like his, who Alfred played with from sunup to sunset. Those dreams, of the boy who Alfred thought was his little brother, gave him a new flickering joy inside him. It was bittersweet, but those dreams gave him something happy to hold on to.
Alfred sent his first paper airplane when he was about fifteen. It was sent on a clear, breezy afternoon with stolen paper, the scrawl it bore messy and the spelling abhorrent. It took him three tries to send it over the high barbed-wire fence. The intended receiver almost didn’t get it. It was someone who wore white, and only white, and looked rather weak from Alfred’s position on one side of the fence. He caught sight of the paper caught in the dry, dead weeds and retrieved it. He opened the letter and read it on the spot. Alfred was too far away to see the expression of whoever had gotten the plane, and so he waited in the gravel and watched the person who’d received the letter walk away.
("Fine, fine, fine. I promise. You know I'll always love you best. Can I go now? I need to make dinner." The words made Alfred swell with joy, because it meant that no matter what he could count on his brother‘s love.)
Alfred cried out in frustration, nearly shook the metal fence in anger. He’d seen whoever was dressed in white pass by the fence every day for nearly four days, now, and had thought it would be alright to try and contact that person. When he realised the guards of the prison would notice him right away if he was leaning against the fence talking to someone, he decided that sending a note would be best. He even convinced one of the younger inmates to show him how to make a paper airplane and teach him to fly it properly. He’d stolen paper and a pencil in order to write the note, and had been painstaking in getting the letters neat and words properly spelled.
Just when Alfred lost hope, though, he saw the sickly person dressed in white return. The person was shuffling and looked like… he was trying to throw something. It took Alfred a moment to realise that it was another paper airplane. Once the paper finally made it over the fence the person in white left with a feeble wave. Alfred read the page, and then read it again. And again. And again. The words were so achingly familiar, as if an old friend had penned the letter instead of a stranger.
And the stranger in white returned the next day, a second paper plane at the ready. He threw it over the fence after a few attempts and left soon afterwards. It didn’t matter to Alfred. He had all the proof of the stranger’s presence he needed in his hands. That night he wrote his own response, smiling all the while. Already he felt a kinship to the person in white.
Alfred’s dreams continued, to the point that the monochrome world he lived in seemed less real than the vivid, exciting world in his dream. It was so real, so strong, that Alfred could no longer be certain what was existent and what wasn’t.
(“C’mon Alfred! Leave Arthur alone!”
“No way, I’m gonna get him good this time!” Alfred smiled, confident that he would not get in trouble for what he was about to do. And even if he did, his brother would always be there to help him out of it again.)
Soon, Alfred knew that his dream-family was even more precious to him than anyone he knew in the waking world. Except for one person. The someone in white who had visited him every day, bearing a paper airplane and sending it over the fence. Alfred tried to respond as often as he could, but often found himself unable to get the paper needed. He straight-out refused to reuse the paper planes the person in white had sent him. He treasured each airplane and reread them constantly. In the middle of the night when he could not read them, he slept curled around the paper, feeling the warmth of kinship and affection almost emanating from the paper.
But the love from the planes, though strong and desperately needed, was nothing compared to the sheer adoration Alfred received from the twin he had in his dreams. His twin was quiet and gentle and while often opposed to Alfred, he always found a way to help him a little, ease the pain of their quarrels. Whenever Alfred came home hurt, his brother would be there with bandages and sympathy, with the occasional shot of common sense and sarcasm to set him straight again. Even when Alfred left the house that he and his brothers, adopted and blood, lived in his twin was patient and fought against him reluctantly at best.
The best dreams, though, were the ones where Alfred wasn’t fighting, wasn’t worrying, just enjoying spending time with his family. From the way his twin accepted Alfred’s closeness, Alfred’s need to be close, with a light laugh and a shuffle nearer to the way he looked up at him with adoring eyes and easy smiles, Alfred could feel nothing but love for and from the brother that appeared in his dreams. And he got the sense that his twin would do anything for him.
Things took a turn for the worst soon after Alfred’s someone in white announced he had turned sixteen. Alfred’s dreams had changed in scope. In the first ones he was an infant, and there was a sense of a great deal of time passing between the dreams. Now he was a grown-up, and things were getting harder to take. Alfred didn’t understand a great deal of the details surrounding his dreams (being referred to as the former nation America never failed to confuse him) but he understood that somehow he’d ended up in a position of great power. And drunk on this power, he began to make a series of bad choices.
It began with a fit of jealousy. That a black-haired man who Alfred could only feel friendship for was closer to a man who looked startling like Arthur, heavy eyebrows and all, than Alfred himself. He wanted the man who looked like Arthur, and Alfred felt the same even from his position outside all it.
(The order was made in a darkened room, out of sight of cameras or recording devices.
“Ruin the Land of the Rising Sun.”)
Oh, but even worse was what he told his twin to do. His gentle, loving twin who cared for everyone, who wanted peace above all else. Alfred felt horrible after that dream, because he knew he’d done something he could never forgive himself for. He had taken advantage of his brother’s willingness to do anything for him.
(“Please Matt, you have to do this!” Alfred begged, holding his brother’s hand as if it were his last lifeline. The uncertainty on his twin’s face was clear, but slowly it melted away, replaced by a resignation that broke Alfred’s heart to remember.
“I’ll do it for you.” It took Alfred almost three days to realise the full implications of that agreement. That his twin loved him so much, he truly would do anything for him. He’d cried for his cruelty and his brother’s kindness as he worked.)
His twin willing killed the black-haired man that had once been Alfred’s friend. The Land of the Rising Sun (Alfred was told it was Japan, but surely that couldn’t be true. Japan had since been completely wiped off the map, and he would never order its destruction) was bombed into oblivion.
(Alfred remembered seeing his twin, with blood still splattered on his face and hands, in their room cleaning off. He gasped in horror at the sight and his twin replied with, “I’m sorry for startling you.”
That night he could hear the sobs racking his brother’s body while he pretended to sleep.)
The dreams stopped after that. Alfred no longer could find solace even in his old dreams, the ones where things were happy and peaceful. Alfred sought out comfort in the only remaining source he had. His person in white, who was nothing more than a someone Alfred could talk to, could trust. The teen threw all his energy into becoming friends with his someone, did all he could to become a someone to the person in white who visited him every day.
Those paper planes became Alfred’s hope to live. If in his dreams he was cruel and manipulative and selfish, he would make up for it in this world. Eventually, he would get free of his prison, and he would become a person his someone in white could call a brother. He would love his someone so dearly he would do anything. And he would trust this someone enough to not take advantage of such a bond.
Soon. He would escape soon and learn his someone’s name and do everything in his power to make him smile. He just had to wait.
The last paper plane Alfred received was an apology. His someone had to go far away, and he would not be returning. There were apologies and words assuring that the person in white cared deeply for Alfred. But it was not enough.
Alfred had lived through much agony in his life. He’d been worked to the bone, beaten to the point of passing out, only to be awakened and beaten again, and tormented by his own selfishness in his dreams. But nothing could compare to the tears he shed over that last piece of hope he had treasured being snuffed out and smashed. His someone in white was his last hope for redemption, his last hope for a bright future. Even if he escaped, how would he be able to live with himself, without the one person who’d been a brother to him? He couldn’t. Alfred had never felt so trapped in his life.
He spent long hours scouring the prison for any letters he could’ve missed, whiled away the time waiting for his someone in white to return. Nothing.
Even so, Alfred kept the paper planes he’d received. Those were memories that hadn’t been soured. The kinship and affection was still the same, unabused and warm as ever. He held tight to one in particular, the final letter. He avoided those bitter lines about how his someone was leaving. Instead he focused on those last tidy lines, that promised that Alfred would always be remembered and treasured as a brother.
The day after his someone in white left him, Alfred found himself being held down by a pair of guards as a third took the plane from his hands and read it. The man sneered and tore it. For a long moment, Alfred’s heart stopped beating. He watched the shreds of paper flutter to the ground.
(They were coming for him, those who understood that Alfred’s greed had gone far too far. He stood silently, one hand on his window, watching the rain come down and waiting to be captured and given his punishment. Even now he could not bring himself to regret.)
Something in Alfred snapped. He released a feral roar of agony and tore himself free. His left hand clenched around the shred of paper, those last words of love, while his right rushed forward to punch the laughing guard’s face. He was held back by someone from behind as soon as the blow landed, and Alfred sobbed and struggled.
(Alfred was so intent on the rain and the feeling of cool glass under his palm that he didn’t notice his twin until he heard the rustle of heavy cloth. When he turned his brother held the coat around him.
“You have to leave.”)
Alfred’s outburst had earned him a ticket to the chamber where his parents had been slaughtered years earlier. He, a young man that was still strong and as healthy as anyone could get in such a godforsaken place, was sent to his death alongside the elderly, the ill, the infants, and pregnant women. Anyone who was no longer of use to United Russia‘s prison camps.
("Nobody will notice. I already cut my hair. I love you. Please go now, while there's still time.")
When he was thrown into the chamber he could smell death and the sharp scent of chemicals. Cries of despair echoed in the small chamber. Alfred’s emotions almost completely shut down. He was going to die.
(He didn’t beg or plead. Just looked right at the camera, as if he was looking directly at the viewers, and smiled. Smiled! A soft, sweet smile, as if to reassure them, as if to tell them that it would all be okay, that everything was going to be all right… as if he were genuinely, heartbreakingly happy…
And then the shot.)
Alfred had no regrets left. But still, something inside him was screaming. He wanted to live a little longer. To see his someone in white once more. Standing as best as he could, Alfred tried to get to the door. It was desperate, it was foolish, and the doors slammed shut long before he could escape. He pounded on them anyways, hanging his head and letting tears drip down his face.
(The gunshot that ends his brother's life is loud, so loud, too loud, and it works its way into every dream and every thought and every emotion he has, until all Alfred can think about is gunshots--)
Alfred fell to the ground, choking as the poisonous gas flowed into the room. No one was left standing. Blood was leaking from Alfred’s mouth, forming a puddle around his head. His unfocused eyes caught sight of something. A shred of white paper. That last bit of his someone’s love and understanding. He reached out weakly, took it into his hand.
(“England raised me. France fostered me. But you - you, Russia, have taught me how to hate.”)
Stand. He had to stand. He wasn’t going to let himself die lying down, surrendering. He struggled, leaning against the wall and fighting the pain in his chest, his shortness of breath. In vain, Alfred screams, and wants only one thing in his final moments.
("Bang," he whispers, but does not pull the trigger.)
The twin he lost in his dreams, his someone in white. In that last moment they are one and the same, and Alfred begs the heavens to tell him one thing before he dies. His name.