What is... "Home?" (Hetalia Fanfic, W.A. '13 Finalist)

Chapter 19~!

The Thursday Al left things just seemed to be falling apart for me.

"Cuba, hey! I told you that's Canada! Remember, he's got the bear and not the hamburger?" I yelled loudly as I stomped over to Matthew and Carlos for the second time today. "You gotta learn to tell the difference, man!" Carlos apologized and left as I helped Matt up. "You okay?"

"Y-Yeah, thanks," he said rather shortly. It only took me a second to figure out why he might be so put-out, enough to be short with me.

"It's no big deal, Mattie. No one cares if someone comes to your rescue," I said softly but strongly. 'I must have hurt his pride be being able to break up the fight when he couldn't.'

His shoulders just slumped. "I know. They would if they knew I was being saved by a girl all this time, but... Ugh, I'm just so weak! I hate this!" He kicked at a clump of grass angrily, but it seemed half-hearted to me.

"Mattie... You're not weak, you just don't know how to assert yourself. Besides, Carlos has a temper and it's hard for him to tell the difference between you and your brother when he's in a rage. It's no big deal, I don't mind setting him straight."

"But I mind," he said back, gesturing to himself with one hand without turning around. "I don't want to be saved, I want to be the one /doing/ the saving. Just once I'd like to feel what Alfred feels when he's saving someone. I want to know what that feels like, to see someone who was helpless say "Thank you so much!" to me and not look through me!" He was trying to raise his voice but it was failing greatly, like always.

There was a deep moment of silence between us, mostly because I was shocked that he had poured his heart out like that. When I thought of what to say, I said it fairly softly with my hands clasped behind my back.

"But you already have, Mattie. Don't you remember the day I first got here? You chose to keep my secret so I wouldn't be kicked out for lying, and if you hadn't I would be out in the streets right now. Or mugged, or shot, or raped, or back with Martin. I might not be alive if you hadn't helped me," I said sincerely, feeling my eyes grow hot with all the emotion this day had brought on me. I was so ready to go to bed, but it was only lunchtime!

I think he turned around then, but I was looking at the ground a few feet to my left, a little embarrassed or something. Maybe. Because I wasn't looking, it surprised me when he hugged me a little, kinda like a bro-hug but without the patting on my back and arm between us. So it was really just a hug, I guess.

"I guess you're right," he admitted after releasing me with a sheepish blush. "I never really thought about it like that. Thank you."

"Yeah," I answered with a nod, sniffing but disguising it by coughing into my fist right after. "I did say "Thank you so much!" when you promised to keep my secret, if memory serves," I pointed out.

Matthew chuckled. "I guess you did, eh? Come on, let's go before the next bell rings."

As we left to go to the cafeteria where our bags were, a chilly wind picked up and I drew nearer to my friend. I was really tempted to stick my hands in one of his pockets since mine didn't seem very warm, but that would have looked girly and that's the last thing I wanted to look.

When we got to our destination I had to clean off some sort of sauce that had spilled onto it. Then in 5th period the heating system seemed to be offline and so I was shivering there in my seat along with everybody else, trying to curl up into a ball without touching any of my desk's metal bars. Everytime my leg brushed one I would feel the freezing metal bite through my clothes and almost shriek. Of course, this cold didn't seem to bother Mr. Dawson at all, because he just kept right on lecturing about the use of verb phrases while my jaw almost fell off from its chattering. And, of course, Ivan and Matthew were hardly affected by this temperature.