36(Old): Hello! I started this story with the help of a writing prompt, and almost ten months later decided that it'd make a darn good fanfiction if I finished it. Let me know if you like it, and if you hate it, please tell me why! I don't know how often I'll be able to upload, and hopefully it's not too bad. This is an eventual USxUK, and maybe PruCan (or PruHun? Can't ever decide) if I can fit it in. I do not own Hetalia or any characters.
(New): 20,000 words into this, I've concluded that there will be no Prussia ship (I like him better single, anyway), and am unsure if it will remain USxUK. It is slowly growing towards FrUk as in FACE, though I haven't actually written any scenes that aren't more or less platonic. I'm better wit side romance, I guess. To make up for it, a preview of some upcoming characters: BTT, Nordics, possibly the UK brothers, Lovino and…SEALAND IS THE BEST GOSH DARN TIME TRAVELER YOU'VE EVER SEEN!
Thanks,
xx Sveg
Summary (Old (But still pretty good) (but still old. Story has changed.)
Alfred F. Jones, time traveler supreme, believes his life sucks. Always having to work and never getting a break, he goes through each of his assignments without asking any questions. It's better to just get 'er done.
Then, his Counter, Mattie, disappears without a trace.
Without his Counter, flares are popping up in timeline after timeline, and Alfred has no where to turn to. He barely knows how to work the whole time-traveling thing with Mattie. He's desperate and doomed and sure that the world is going to end, and it'll be all his fault.
Arthur Kirkland refuses to have this imbecile ruin the universe, and no one is allowed to beat up Francis the Frog but him.
Together, Alfred and Arthur embark on a journey in search of answers: where is Mattie and Francis? Who does Alfred really work for? Why are there so many mistakes in time?
They might never know.
He woke to the sound of pedestrians out on the street, and then to the light streaming through the blinds. He rubbed his face and attempted to bury his head in the sheets, but the air quickly went too stale and stifling for his comfort.
He threw his legs over the side of his bed with a huff, arching his back and running his fingers through his hair. Sometimes, he really, really wished everything would just go silent and let him sleep.
A garbage truck rumbled past the house, and he scowled, flipping open the timepiece looped around his neck. The miniature watch worked, ticking steadily, but what should be the numbers 1-12 were instead small, unidentified notches on the dial. He squinted through bleary eyes, trying to determine whether the little hand was on the eight or the nine.
He snapped the case closed, shutting away the ticking face into the simple silver locket. He studied it in the palm of his hand for a second, his pulse matching that of the reliable tick-tick-ticking of the watch. The timepiece was a little bigger than a dollar coin, and though it had lain against his skin, the silver was cold to the touch. The chain around his neck was thin and long, and when he returned the watch back under his shirt, it skimmed the skin a few inches down from his chest.
It wasn't as marvelous-looking as it really should have been. Though, he wasn't real sure what 'should have been' actually looked like.
The sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door roused him from his thoughts, and the noise of that person storming in completely had him on full alert.
"Your late," he grumbled, getting up from the bed.
The other boy crossed his arms. "I am not. You are."
"Yeah. Because you didn't wake me up."
"I'm not your servant, Alfred."
"Well, you are my Counter."
"Exactly. Not your servant, your Counter. And I wish you'd pay more attention to that."
"Aw, I thought that you already knew I loved ya, Mattie," he teased.
"Oh, don't you start. Get ready- pancakes go cold quickly."
"Chocolate chip?" Alfred asked hopefully.
"Better hurry and get dressed to go see," Matthew replied with a sniff, though he was smiling slightly. "Get to it."
"Why can't I work in this?"
"Your pajamas? Alfred, you aren't going to travel through time in your pajamas." He slammed the door closed, and Alfred stalked to his drawers, rummaging for a clean shirt.
"Can't I get a break?" he muttered to himself, sticking his tongue out at the door.
"No," Matthew shouted, hearing him. "And put your tongue back inside your mouth; you aren't a child."
"Who says I had my tongue out?"
"Alfred."
"Alright, alright, jeez." He got ready as slow as possible, just to annoy his Counter further.
"Fine," he heard Matthew say, "you get cold breakfast."
"I'm coming, I'm coming." He tugged on a plain red T-shirt over his head and rolled up the hem of his jeans. Shoes. He picked up the mound of covers on his floor and snatched one Nike, jamming his foot inside and scrambling for the other.
He washed his face in his bathroom, sliding his fingers once through his hair and scowling at the cowlick that always remained.
Looking in the mirror, he didn't look like anybody important: shortish dark blonde hair, a (not that he would ever admit it) sort of baby-ish face, long arms and legs. Not to mention the glasses, which he slid on with a smirk. He looked like any other nineteen-year-old. Except, you know, the whole he-wasn't-a-normal-nineteen-year-old part.
If he was even nineteen.
He threw open the door to his room, and very nearly hit Matthew.
"Your shoelaces are untied," his Counter sighed.
"I'll tie them later."
Matthew shook his head. "Really, Alfred, you should hurry up in the mornings."
"Would you like me to try again? I can do better if you like." He waggled his eyebrows and smirked. Matthew didn't smile, but chose to scowl instead, shoving him down the stairs so fast it was a wonder he didn't fall down them and break his arm.
"You know," he was grumbling. "I'm your Counter, which means I'm supposed to survey you working. But how am I supposed to survey you working when you don't work?"
"I work! I work everyday! Sometimes I just wake up a little later, that's all."
"You always wake up 'just a little later'. And I've caught you falling asleep on your assignments more than once."
"Only when you're giving me them," Alfred retorted. "And you know, up in Japan, falling asleep while you're working is considered a sign of dedication."
Matthew snorted.
"No, really! People even fake it just to look good. Maybe I want to look good."
"Well, sucks for you, because we aren't in Japan. We're not even in the same hemisphere."
"Well, technically, America and Japan are both in the Northern-"
"Oh, just shut it." Matthew glanced at his watch with a frown. "And either you swallow pancakes whole, or you come to the Circle immediately."
Alfred groaned. "But breakfast."
"But work. Stop being a sissy and come on." He turned the dial on his watch and went up in a streak of white.
Alfred edged towards the kitchen, eyeing the plate of pancakes and bacon wistfully. He was hungry. Matthew didn't expect him to go on an assignment hungry, did he? If he waited, then his breakfast really would go cold, and all poor Mattie's hard work would go to waste-
He shook his head with a sigh, lifting his timepiece out from under his shirt and twisting the knob on the side without even needing to flip open the cover and look at the face.
Matthew was pacing across the floor with his hands fluttering about him. "You're late! Again!" he exclaimed, though hardly two minutes had passed between them.
"I was thinking about breakfast," Alfred said simply, jamming his thumbs into his pockets sulkily.
"Well, stop thinking about it. Think about lunch or something. Work first, needs second."
"Oh, I see," he responded facetiously. "Work before survival. Yes. Perfect sense. I understand now."
"Missing one breakfast won't kill you, Alfred. You're packing on the pounds, anyway."
"Hey."
"As your Counter, I have the right to speak true."
"It's like you're reading it from a script or something," Alfred muttered, walking from the edge of the Circle and towards the center. The Circle was their meeting place, where Matthew gave him his assignment and he went out and did them, and once that work was completed they met here again, and Matthew usually gave him another assignment. The Circle scared him. It wasn't the open columns or large, gold, arched ceiling. It wasn't the floating feeling he got when he entered- no, it was the fact that it lay right outside the Present Timeline, a permanent fixture. He couldn't go back or go forward in time to it- He could only be in the Present Timeline.
"What's up today?" he asked, though he honestly could care less.
Matthew furrowed his eyes together in thought. "What Present Line are we in?
"Errmm…somewhere in the 2000's, I think. Twenty-first century."
"Ah, yes, I remember. Go back to Past; to the nineteenth."
"Details?"
"Landsford W. Hastings authored a book- the Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California. Make sure a man named James Reed gets it." The book materialized with a snap of his fingers, and he thrust it in front of him at Alfred.
"And what will this book do?"
"It advertises a specific route leading out west that was never tested."
"Continue."
"There will be a group of families traveling west into California. George Donner will know about the route. The train will split. The Donner Party will take Hasting's route."
"Why's that?" he asked, though history bored him to no end, and he was only pleasing Matthew.
"They will pass through the Sierra Nevadas. And, because of snow, they will be forced to stop moving and stay where they are."
"Go on."
"You know, I don't think you're really listening to me."
"I am." Half-listening. "I'm just waiting for my assignment, which, you know, I'm trying to get full details on, by the way."
"Well, the Donner Party gets stuck. And desperate, with low supplies. And, well, um… they'll resort to cannibalism."
Alfred shivered. "What! And I'm supposed to make sure this happens?"
"That's American history."
With a sigh, Alfred flipped the locket back open and moved it around the chain twice before twisting the knob on the side of the dial.
The white light swallowed him, and he smiled, because whether anybody liked it or not, he was a Time Traveler. And time travelers were, in fact, something very formidable to be.