The smoke curled in the air.

The bar was crowded and loaded with strange sounds and sights, but to the man sitting alone in the booth, it was absolutely silent.

Arthur Kirkland, recently 23, was sitting and nursing his drink. The ice clinked and shivered around the glass as he took a long swig. His leather jacket crinkled and memories came slithering up his mind.

It wasn't his usual hangout.

Usually, he would go to a concert, get hammered and rage against the world. The unfairness of life, screech at the winds, destroy the peace. This bar was different.

He went there because, over the past few years, his music sense had been changing.

He was now into alternative, a quieter, equally unhappy, more in depth form of his beloved punk. It all started two years ago, the music, but the memories were from much earlier.

He was sixteen.

The air was petulant and perfect. The wind blew, not too strong but with enough force. The sky was grey and the ambiguous grey sky swirled unimaginably fast. The trees blew their green leaves as a few stray drops fell from the sky.

Arthur was walking home from his friend's house, one of his only few girl friends. They were working on a project. The project was unfinished but Mariana needed to see her boyfriend that night. She was a nice girl, a bit upfront about many things, but nice and wholesome.

Arthur got the call right inside his front door.

A drunk driver had struck his friend, killing her. No exceptions, no negotiations. She was gone. Away and far too far to come back.

He didn't cry, not heavily at first. He couldn't let his brothers see him, the unmovable brother, so weak. He was the rock; the silent, constant force that kept the family tethered to reality after their father had left their mother. Even through his mother's new marriage, he was the surrogate father. He hated trying to discipline his brothers, he didn't like to be the bad guy, but it fell to him. It always fell to him.

Then, alone in his room with nothing but his thoughts to accompany him, he wept and cursed at the dark being lurking there. It had stolen his friend; not a good friend but it was someone near to him. That was enough to matter.

His heart was fully broken by four in the morning. This new Arthur, cold and distant, wouldn't feel anything. Instead of being the strong silent one, he would just be the rock.

He later got a call from the police; they questioned him about when she left. That's when they told him.

The drunk driver was injured slightly, but the friend of the driver, who was also in the car, had switched seats and driven the car away. The police would most likely never bring the man or his accomplice to justice.

That was the final blow for Arthur.

He would never be the same creature. The quiet but tolerable and somewhat snarky man was gone. In his place was a stone, no longer a steady rock, but a stone meant for slinging and throwing and destruction.

But he couldn't stop being the brother, as hard as he tried; he still felt the loyalty to his family. So for the remaining years in secondary school, he studied and tried and pushed himself to be the best to leave the whole damn country. That's when the obsession with punk music began.

It was filled with yowlers. They turned their back on the people and places that scorned them and destroyed their world with a nice 'fuck you' attitude to finish.

With his scholarship to a 'college' in America, he left and changed almost over night. The secret piercings came out, a vicious tattoo across his left shoulder made itself known, he wore dark clothing, he rejected the opposite sex altogether. He went out every night and partied hard, getting drunk and getting fucked by anyone who would take the broken man and make him whole. If only for a moment.

It was through his attempt to destroy himself bit by bit, that he met Gilbert. Gilbert led him to a long string of people that eventually led him to Alfred.

Alfred Bloody Jones. The man took another drink. Scourge of my life.

Alfred was the opposite of Arthur. Alfred was the shining example of American can-do spirit. He was a model citizen, a 'hero' of the masses, a good kid and naïve boy. His life was perfect. That was until Alfred decided to mess with Arthur.

Well, he wasn't messing with Alfred per say, he was just annoying him. And somewhere deep inside Arthur, some sprig of his old personality raised its head. It looked at the sun that had flitted through his barren heart and it hoped against hope.

No one would ever dare mess with Arthur; even the toughest American jock or jarhead wouldn't cross the slight, short Brit.

He had the look in his eyes, the look of a man that had nothing left, that would cloud his emerald eyes and reduce their sheen. He was broken and beaten, and with nothing left he would fight until his last drop of blood spilled.

But Alfred did.

He pushed past the thorns and the thistle and he talked to the man. He bothered him and he annoyed the man until the old personality, with the snippy comments, would be drawn out. Soon, Arthur began to look forward to their daily dalliances. And soon, it wasn't the conversation that made him look forward to a new day. It was the man himself.

Alfred became his personal sun, the object he revolved around. If the man appeared, the day would be better; if not, the world had better watch out.

Soon, the touches between the too, the nicknames and the insults, softened. Alfred would add things under his breath, things that he didn't think Arthur would hear.

But Arthur did.

And so the relationship began.

It wasn't anything more than a reliable fuck at first. But it opened a small crack in the stone. One crack, it is said, could destroy an entire city, let alone the broken man's heart.

So for a year, they would take their fury and unleash it on each other. It was just raw lust and passion. But it was towards the end of the first year that the kisses smelt of something different. Time would be spent with a tad bit of care. The fingers would linger instead of bite.

It was then that Arthur heard the song.

He was crawling through the dark alleys of the Internet, when he heard a song that made him weep for the first time in a long while. It ripped open his soul and poured out the hopelessness and the hate.

The ghosts swirled around him and for once it was quiet.

He needed that song. It became his new anthem. It talked of the loss and the lust for something better, the fights and the insanity left in the wake.

It made him begin to turn to the alternative songs. The songs that also talked of destruction but returned it with equal parts hope, the lilting melodies carrying him away. To a happier time. A time when he was whole.

It haunted him for weeks, permeating every corner of his brain and his being and refused to budge. He wrote pages and pages of his emotions with this song, rewriting the lyrics separately over and over. Possessed. Seeking. Holding out for the truth, he searched. He memorized every word until it finally broke him. Alfred was there, getting started when it just hit him. The emotion was fitted into the slot that that song had made and he cried like a child for the first time in years. The tears were not silent, but they were pure. They dotted the bed and Alfred took the man, still broken, into his arms.

But the stone was still there. It lashed out, striking Alfred. Arthur stood above him and cried, Al's cheek red.

Alfred left. The door was not slammed shut but gently pushed closed. It was worse than anything. Arthur had no clue what to do.

"I just stare at the clocks,"

"And I cry in my sleep"

"And I tear up your letters"

"And I burn them in heaps"

"And I gather the ashes"

"In that hole in the ground where we fell."

So Arthur, unsure of anything, dragged his ass to a different bar. A bar boasting alternative music near the upper west side that he would hopefully hear this song again. Just once, he needed to hear it.

Just once.

[Author's Note]

Yo,

Anyway, this is the first I'm writing of Hetalia, so ya know, don't hate if you don't know it yourself. The song is Wishing Well by Airborne Toxic Event. Amazing song and it fits this weather perfectly. To best fit the fic, listen to the song on repeat feel what Artie feels.

~VG4455