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The Scent of a Rose	By : larien04 Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 2855 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia and I make no money off of this fic!

Chapter List
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Making his way back to his post Arthur had learned that the troops had been re-assigned to clean up duty; there were houses that needed rebuilding, streets destroyed, entire business districts that need to be built from the ground up. There would be a lot of manual labor that needed to be done and Arthur was going to help as much as possible; he had a good relationship with his citizens and he wasn’t going to sit back and watch his people re build their own city while he sat around and gave orders; he was going to help. He had built this country with his hands and he was prepared to do it again.

The night came and walking into his house Arthur felt like his usual comfy home suddenly seemed too big. Arthur had always been a solitary person so he didn’t have an overly large house; in fact, aside from the overly large garden in the front of the house, it was impossible to tell that any person of importance lived in the house from the outside. Arthur lived in a nice part of town but it certainly wasn’t the nicest part of the city. It wasn’t until one entered Arthurs house that it could be truly told that someone of importance resided within; the library was the largest room in the house and took up two full rooms that were restructured to look like one giant room. The sitting room was filled with materials for embroidery; all sorts of patterns and materials and the walls were lines with needlework that described all of Arthurs highs and lows; with the very center of the wall bearing an embroidery of the Grand Union Flag with the words “4^th July, 1776” stitched beneath it. Francis had always asked him in times past why he chose to have that particular piece of art as his center piece and Arthur had always responded “Because it’s a part of my past whether I want it to be or not.”

That was only the first floor; the second floor guest room was what was truly impressive. The room was filled with what could be only be described as a place that British Museum would envy. The walls were mounted with old rifles and muskets from his privateer days and from the revolution along with rapiers and swords and knives of all sorts; all of them were kept in pristine condition. There were spaces on the wall for several of his old outfits as well; all perfectly preserved in glass cases. Many of his treasures were donated the British Museum long ago but there were some things that he couldn’t bear to part with and those things were kept in this room. There was a small bed in the lavish room that Arthur sometimes slept in when he was feeling depressed or nostalgic but it hadn’t gotten much use lately.

The rest of the house; the kitchen, bathrooms, and the master bedroom were all simple rooms that could be found in any normal house in London but Arthur didn’t feel like visiting any of the three spectacular rooms that made up the Kirkland house hold; he went directly to his bedroom and sighed. The bed in the room was the only thing that could be considered a luxury item; there were several feather pillows adorning it and the bed itself was large and soft, so much so that when one lay on the bed they sunk a good amount. The sheets themselves were a beautiful shade of green silk that matched the color of the man’s eyes perfectly.

Arthur loved this bed, usually, but now it seemed too big, too lavish and when he lay in it all he felt was emptiness. He had only spent two days with Francis but having gotten his memory back it felt like it had been forever since he had slept alone. Thinking back to what he had been doing last night at this exact same time, remembering what it had been like to be connected to Francis again made him let out an involuntary moan. Swearing, Arthur realized that he was not going to be able to get to sleep until he talked to the infuriating Frenchman.

Getting out of bed in a huff the Brit stalked down the stairs in annoyance to the phone that was in his sitting room and waited impatiently as the bubbly sounding receptionist placed the long distance phone call.

“Bonjour” came the response on the other end of the receiver after what Arthur deemed to be a ‘unacceptable period of waiting.’

“I didn’t call all the way over there to here that ridiculous language of yours.”

“Arthur?” came the smug reply “That didn’t take long; do you miss me already?”

“No, frog, I don’t miss you; don’t be ridiculous. I was only ringing you to make sure that you were able to sleep.”

“And why wouldn’t I be able to sleep? I am over here in the country of love; there are plenty of beautiful people I could take to my bed to help me fall asleep.”

Arthur had half a mind to hang up the phone right now; he couldn’t believe he had been insecure enough to call to begin with.

“Frog, I swear to you if I find out you have been with anybody I will form a peace treaty with Germany and I will convince him that Germany needs a French village!”

Francis’ laugh was infectious and the sound of it made Arthur smile against his own will. “Arthur, don’t you think that’s going a little too far, mon amour?”

Arthur rubbed his temples trying to assuage his oncoming headache “Why did I even bother ringing you? Only you can be this infuriating in such a short amount of time.”

“It must be love; you couldn’t sleep without hearing my musical voice. Do you need me to tell you a bedtime story Angleterre?”

The line suddenly went dead and Arthur marched back upstairs in the same angry rage as he did coming down the stairs cursing the man he loathed more than anything in the world. Surprisingly though, to him at least, he didn’t have any more problems sleeping that night.

After that night Arthur knew that he was going to have to find something to keep his mind off of Francis or he was going to end up with a very large phone bill and migraine every night until the war was over. So the surprisingly domestic former pirate decided that he was going to make needlework in his spare time at night.

The days were filled with thankless labor; there were many civilians who viewed him with contempt, some of them being blunt enough to tell him that he was the reason they were in this predicament to begin with and that they didn’t need his charity. Those days were the hardest for Arthur and he came home many nights in a foul mood, but there were others who were eternally grateful to him when he would offer his help and that, almost, balanced out the contempt, almost.

Arthur began to hate the rain; a very dangerous thing to hate when you lived in a city that rained more days a year than it shined. He especially hated the rain at night when he was trying to sleep; he couldn’t understand it, there was once a time when Arthur would love to sit up and listen to the rain; sometimes he would even go outside late at night and breathe in the scent of a fresh rain. Now the rain made the house seem lonely and he would often find himself clutching a pillow when he woke in the mornings.

The rain seemed to also make him worry more than usual; every time he sat up in bed at nights he would start to second guess Francis’ words at the train station. He had only been joking when he said he might not show up, right? Of course, it was absurd that Arthur would even think such things; Francis loved him more than he deserved at times why would he not be there? Arthur logically knew that his irrationalities were ridiculous, why would the man wait five years for him and suddenly give up now? He couldn’t help himself though; the usually logical Briton was going insane thinking about Francis finding somebody else before the war ended. It got to the point where Arthur’s dreams would torment him with images of the man with somebody else in various compromising positions that made Arthur sick to his stomach.

It didn’t matter how much he suffered internally though; there was no bloody way on earth that Arthur was going to ring Francis and beg him to come to London; especially after he had been so adamant about not letting Francis come to begin with. Sure it would be nice to have Francis with him again but he knew the man would never let him forget it if he asked him to come to London. He could almost envision the French taunts and that alone, coupled with an iron clad stubborn will, stopped the man from calling even though there were some nights where he had the phone in his hand.

Nearly a year had passed since their last meeting; eight months to be exact and Arthur’s stubbornness had led him into a state of depression where his paranoia had convinced him that Francis didn’t want him and that he had probably already found somebody else.

It was May and the European victory had officially been announced that morning but it was raining, like it always seemed to be nowadays, and Arthur took the rain as an ill omen and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go all the Paris just to be stood up.

There was a tiny voice in the back of Arthur’s mind that constantly reminded him that Francis waited five years for him; eight months was nothing compared to that. Arthur liked that voice; it seemed to be the voice of reason against his darker thoughts of late but another voice would always follow; drowning the good one out and reminding Arthur that he didn’t actually know for sure if Francis waited for him, he had only assumed it. The two had never actually sat down and discussed what Francis did for those five years so it could be entirely possible that Arthur was wrong about Francis and only wanted to believe he waited for him.

“Well,” Arthur thought aloud checking his watch, noting that the time was 2pm “I suppose I still have a few hours to decide if I’m going to go or not.”

A/N: So, I looked up telephones during WW2 and long distance phone calls and such and I realize that the process of a long distance call during WW2 was excruciatingly painful. You had to call the operator and announce that you were trying to call long distance and tell them who you wanted to call, then the operator would have to find the number and she would call you back, sometimes hours later when the line actually connected but for the sake of this story, let’s just pretend it’s not really that difficult.

Also, while I was looking things up for telephones and stuff during ww2 I saw this picture http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/02/7_to_101.jpg and apparently in the U.S. during WW2 the phone companies had this big propaganda thing where they would encourage citizens to not use the phone lines during 7pm-10pm so that the service men who were trying to call their homes could get through; I thought that was pretty cool.

Additionally, in case anybody doesn’t know what the Grand Union Flag looks like: http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-server/image/composition/17008121/view/1/producttypecolor/26/type/png/width/378/height/378/july-4-1776-grand-union-flag_design.png (I’ll leave out the obvious USUK joke)
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The Scent of a Rose