Beep! Beep! Beep! The white alarm clock chirped noisily at seven in the morning.

Alfred Jones groaned in what sounded like a mix between, 'Awe damn, I have to wake up?' and, 'Whelp, time to do the impossible task of getting the kids out of bed,' as he smacked the alarm clock on its round head. Alfred groaned again, and begrudgingly hoisted himself up into a sitting position.

Next to Alfred in the bed lay the sleeping body of his husband, Arthur Kirkland. Quietly, as not to disturb the sleeping man, Alfred reached over to his nightstand and, still not leaving the warmth of his bed, he plucked a pair of black-rimmed glasses off of it. He put the glasses over his eyes and realised that they were full of sticky handprints. Alfred sighed heavily, figuring that his kids, Jules and Kym, must have been fooling around with them yesterday. He took the glasses off of his eyes, wiped the lenses on his shirt, and put them back on his eyes.

Alfred put a hand on his husband's shoulder and shook him, not violently of course, but just enough to make him stir. "Dude, Arthur, it's time to get the kids ready for school. You gonna wake up for me?"

Arthur groaned. "I'll only get up if you wake Kym up."

"What? Awe man, not fair. I woke Kym up yesterday." Alfred cringed at the thought of waking their eight-year-old daughter up again. She hated being woken up in the mornings. She preferred waking up on her own time, not anybody else's, much unlike her ten-year-old brother, Jules, who loved being woken up by his dads.

Arthur smirked, "I'm really not going to wake her up." He pushed himself into a sitting position. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to pee." Arthur swung his legs out of the bed, the rest of him soon following.

Alfred sighed and got out of bed as well, but instead of trudging to the bathroom as Arthur did, Alfred walked down the hall to Kym's room, and opened the door.

Kym was sound asleep in her little trundle bed, her long blonde hair was wrapped around her pale neck and part of her face. Her blankets were tangled around her waist and legs, like pink snakes.

Alfred smiled at Kym's peaceful body. Right now, it was almost like she wouldn't have a terrifying tantrum the second Alfred woke her up. Almost. He knew it was going to happen in a few seconds. Slowly, he walked over to her tiny bed, kneeled down, and yelled, "Kym! Kym! Kym! Kym! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Third grade isn't gonna wait for ya!"

"Maybe this is why she's so grouchy in the mornings!" Arthur yelled from the bathroom three rooms away. "I wouldn't want some crazy git yelling at me in the morning, either!" The toilet flushed.

Kym's eyes shot open. "Daddy! Stop it! I wanna go back to sleep! Third grade can wait!"

Alfred grinned and started tickling her. "C'mon! Get up, up, up, up, up, up, up!"

Kym shrieked with laughter, desperately swatting at Alfred to get off of her. "D-dad!" She sputtered to Arthur. "M-make Daddy—" she paused to laugh for a while. "Make Daddy s-stop tickling me!" She burst into another fit of laughter.

"Only if you get out of bed, Kymberley," Alfred told her.

"Never!" Kym laughed.

And this was how roughly every day started in that household. The parents would wake up, have some civilised conversation before they woke the kids up, and then the chaos of the day would begin.

After Alfred got Kym out of bed (requiring a promise from Alfred that Kym would be able to wear his coat after school and that hewould make waffles for breakfast), Arthur went into Jules' room, only to find that the boy was already dressed and playing a Gameboy Advance in the corner of his room.

"Jules, where did you get that thing?" Arthur asked, pointing to the red Gameboy.

"Mr. Honda gave it to me yesterday because I was the only one who got an A+ in his class," Jules responded matter-of-factly. Mr. Honda was Jules's fourth-grade teacher who pretty much favoured Jules because of how smart he was.

"He gave you a Gameboy? Aren't those kind of expensive, even though they're old?" Arthur asked.

Jules shrugged. "It used to be his, but he didn't want it anymore I don't think. Besides, even though it's not a 3DS, it's pretty cool."

"Well, you've got to stop saving the universe from aliens," Arthur told Jules, pulling the device out of his hands and ruffling Jules' brown hair. "It's time to eat."

"Ah ha ha, no it's not. Give me five more minutes, dude!" Alfred called from the kitchen downstairs. "Kym wanted waffles!"

Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Waffles? Really?" Jules asked, smiling.

"He spoils you two too much," he said, handing Jules back his toy. "Five more minutes, Jules, and then you really need to put that away."

"Yay!" Jules grinned, taking back the Gameboy. "Thanks, Dad!"

"Alfred! Hurry up! We're gonna be late, you git!" Arthur called from the car in the driveway.

"Hold on a little longer!" Alfred yelled from inside the house. "Gimme like two more minutes!"

Arthur sighed heavily and looked at Jules, who was absorbed in a book in the back seat of the red convertible Audi TTS. "What do you think they could be doing in there, Jules?"

Jules shrugged and turned the page of his book.

"What're you reading?"

Jules wordlessly lifted up the book so that he could still read, but Arthur could see the title.

"To Kill a Mockingbird? Isn't that a little mature for a fourth-grader?"

Jules responded with another shrug.

"Are you going to talk to me?"

Jules struggled to keep a straight face behind his book and shook his head.

Arthur smirked. "Okay, fine then." He turned back to the windshield and honked the horn. "Dammit, Alfred! Hurry up! School is not going to wait for them!"

"God, Arthur! Braids don't do themselves, y'know! And it's not like Kym can make them herself!" Alfred shouted from inside the house.

Arthur started the car to check the time on the radio. "Alfred, we have ten minutes to get them to school, you bloody wanker!"

Jules gasped at his father's choice of words.

"Jules, I'm sure that there are worse words than 'bloody wanker' in that book you're reading," Arthur said. "So relax."

"Alright, we're coming!"

"'Bout time."

Soon, Arthur saw Alfred ushering Kym out of the front door and onto the white porch. Kym's hair was in two, neatly wrapped braids on the side of her head. She grinned and ran over to the car, stopping by the driver's side door, where Arthur was seated. "Dad! Dad! Daddy gave me braids, aren't they fabulous?" She span around, so her uniform skirt, blouse, and braids puffed with air.

"You look like a baby princess," Arthur said, lifting his daughter up over the car door and into the car through the convertible's roof. He kissed her on the cheek and gently tossed her into the back seat.

Alfred opened the passenger's side door and got in the car. "Awe, aren't you a good daddy?" He lilted, poking Arthur in the cheek repeatedly.

Arthur made a face. "Stop it, Alfred."

Alfred laughed. It was sort of a weird laugh, a highly pitched laugh that could last for hours on end because the bounces in his breath were strung together. You would think that it would be an annoying sort of laugh, but it wasn't. It was the type of laugh that made people happy, the type of laugh that you could listen to forever. It was Alfred's trademark.

"Buckle up, kids," Arthur huffed, pulling out of the driveway and into the street.

"Woo, it's hot out." Alfred put a hand out to shield his forehead. He turned around to look at the two kids in the back. "How about after school today, we go swimming in the lake. You guys in?"

"What? Really?" The two children squealed with delight. "Yay! Thanks Daddy!"

Arthur opened his mouth to object. What if the kids had a lot of homework? But Alfred cut him off.

"But only if Dad says it okay," Alfred said, clearly blackmailing him.

"Please, Dad? Please, please, please, please, please?" Kym begged.

Arthur puffed air out through his cheeks and smirked. "Okay, okay, fine. But you, Daddy, and Jules can go swimming, I don't want to, so I'll watch you."

"Yeah! Thanks Dad!" Jules balled his free hand into a fist, still not taking his eyes off of his book.

Arthur smiled and pulled over to the curb right across from the school. The reason that they couldn't park in the school's parking lot was because of an incident that happened in 2010 that nobody really liked to talk about.

"Alright, have fun at school, okay? We'll see you in a few hours." Arthur said.

Jules got out of the car and began to cross the street. "Bye guys!"

Suddenly, Alfred remembered something. "Hey! Jules!" He yelled.

Jules stopped just as he was about to go in the pale yellow building. "What?"

"If Mr. Gilbert and Mrs. Elizaveta's kid picks on you again, you can punch him as hard as you want, you have my permission."

Arthur jumped slightly and yelled to Jules. "Yeah, but you do not have mine! So I had better not be getting any calls from the school telling me that you were fighting!"

Jules stifled a laugh and walked into the school building.

"Bye Dad, bye Daddy," Kym smiled, leaving the car.

"Later dude!" Alfred waved.

"Bye, Kym," Arthur sighed, watching her cross the street.

Suddenly, Kym stopped dead centre in the street. "Hey, Daddy?"

"Hmm? What is it?" Alfred asked.

"You promise you won't forget to let me wear your coat after school today?"

"I promise, Kym. And a hero never goes back on his promises!"

Kym giggled. "Thanks Daddy!" She waved goodbye to them.

The woman in the dark green Subaru Outback was going 65 miles an hour in a 15 mile per hour school crossing zone.

And it didn't look like she saw Kym.

Without thinking, Alfred jumped over Arthur and flew out of the convertible's roof. He ran up behind his daughter, pushed her out of the way, and took the full impact of the car, because heroes just didn't let their kids get killed.

It was as if in slow motion to Alfred, when the car hit him. Amazingly, it didn't hurt at all, it was just a lot of pressure on his side. Alfred didn't feel like he was in his own body anymore; more like he was watching himself get hit, an out-of-body experience as some would call it. He heard someone call a name: "Alfred!" Huh? Who was Alfred? It sounded like a nice name. This Alfred guy must have a nice life with a name like that. He heard it again: "Alfred!" and then he remembered. Oh right, he was Alfred.

Red. That was all anyone saw next. Alfred's blood was sprayed on the front of the Subaru, the pavement, even Kym's face was sprinkled with it.

One of the Subaru's tires was crushing Alfred's right arm, but that was okay, because Alfred knew that was going to die in about a minute anyway.

There was a loud, high pitched ringing everywhere, and Alfred wondered if anybody else could hear it. He heard heavy stomps coming toward him, but the noise made his head hurt, and he felt nauseous. The stomping stopped, and then the yelling and screaming for the Subaru to back up off of Alfred began. The Subaru driver rolled off of Alfred's arm about a lifetime later. It hurt like Hell, but Alfred didn't have the strength to cry out. He heard two loud thumps next to him, and then saw a pair of adult knees to his right, accompanied by a pair of children's knees in a pink uniform skirt.

Alfred thanked his lucky stars—all fifty of them—that Kym was alright.

The two people next to him were crying, Alfred could tell. He couldn't hear what they were saying, because the ringing in his ears had gotten too loud, but he could feel their tears on his face. He hardly had any strength left, but as the world started to become white, Alfred thought to himself: My only regret is not being able to say goodbye.

Arthur and Kym were at Alfred's side, screaming and crying at him to wake up when it happened. Alfred's drooped eyes went glassy, and the weak rise and fall of his chest stopped completely.

Alfred Jones had died.

The funeral was three days after it had happened. Alfred's friends and family came to pay their respects: his friends Feliciano and Lovino Vargas, Lili Zwingli, Ludwig and Gilbert Beilschmidt, Francis Bonnefoy, Ivan Braginski, Yao Wang, Elizaveta Héderváry, Natalia and Yekaterina Arlovskaya, Antonio Carriedo, and Alfred's brother Matthew Williams all came. Alfred and Arthur's two children were not allowed to come until the ceremony was over, for fear of an inappropriate action from one of them, given that the two were so young.

The women were in a cluster on the left side of the room, leaning on each other, begging themselves not to cry. Elizaveta and Natalia were sitting next to each other, holding the other's hand for support. Yekaterina and Lili were next to each other, doing the exact same thing.

The men were on the right side of the room. Nobody knew why they were segregating themselves this way, but nobody cared enough to question it.

Alfred was in a casket decorated in beautiful American flags and surrounded in red, white, and blue flowers. The casket was opened just enough so that the funeral-goers could see Alfred's head and shoulders. It was quite a gorgeous set-up.

The ceremony started, and everyone went grimly silent.

Some of the nations, during the ceremony, cried, while others looked ahead with a forlorn expression; some had faces seemingly carved out of stone.

But that all changed when Arthur decided to speak.

All of the watery, dead, or angry eyes were focused solely on Arthur, the grieving husband of a man whose life had been cut short by a drunk woman.

Standing at the podium, he looked at everyone, and gave a weak smile. Putting his lips by the skinny microphone, he spoke in a soft voice:

"I will tell you all about Alfred F. Jones, my lover..." A tear rolled down his cheek, but he quickly wiped it away.

"A-and I remember when I met him... it was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it, right away... and as the years went on, things got more difficult... we were faced with more challenges."

That was it, the stony-faced people either broke down in tears, or became forlorn.

"I begged him to stay, try to remember what we had in the beginning." Arthur paused to look at the helmet on the table where the casket was laying. It was one of those helmets with the goggles on the front. It looked so lonely without Alfred in it.

"He was magnetic, electric, and everybody knew it." Arthur was interrupted by a loud sob from Matthew in the front. He was covering his face with his hands, and he was hunched over. The man sitting next to him, Gilbert, gently put a hand on his friend's back.

Arthur waited patiently for Matthew to quiet down, as he also took this opportunity to swallow the huge lump in his throat that had been building since he started to speak.

"When he walked in, every woman's head turned... Everyone stood up to talk to him... He was like this hybrid... this mix of a man, who, couldn't contain himself. I always got the sense that... he became torn between... between, being a good person and, missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him." Arthur paused to swallow another lump, but that didn't help this time. He squinted and the tears squeezed out of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, ending by falling onto the podium. His tears inspired some others to sob as well, and everybody waited, and waited, and waited.

"And in that way I, understood him..." Arthur paused to cry a little more. "And I loved him. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him... and..."

Elizaveta, Natalia, and Lili were all sobbing uncontrollably at this point. Only Yekaterina remained distant.

"And I still love him... I love him..."

And Arthur was done, the words had finally escaped his lips, and they hung in the air, suspended. Nobody knew what the appropriate thing to do was, so grief-filled eyes stared at the man on the podium, the man who once had it all, and the man who was loved and loved by Arthur (even if he didn't show it) was now laying cold in a casket.

The man who was now dying inside, found his way to his seat and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until there were no more tears left for him to cry.

Matthew went up to the casket first. Tears running down his cheeks, he saluted his brother, and placed a red rose next to his head. "I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you, Alfred." He wiped away a few stray tears. "I'm sorry that I couldn't do my job... my job as a big brother... to protect my little brother from the big bad world." Suddenly, the French side of Matthew kicked in and he couldn't help himself. "Adieu, Alfred, mon petit héros." Goodbye, Alfred, my little hero. Matthew wiped his eyes gingerly, and dragged his feet all the way to his chair, and sat down.

The Vargas brothers and Antonio made their way up to the casket to say their adios and addio's to the hero that had inspired so many nations. Feliciano quickly leaned over Alfred and kissed his forehead, shamelessly sobbing in front of everybody. His brother, Lovino, stood next to him solemnly with Antonio's hand on his shoulder. "Addio, amico mio," Feliciano whispered, before placing a white rose next to Matthew's red one. Goodbye, my friend. The trio solemnly walked back to their chairs.

Ludwig and Gilbert Beilschmidt trudged over to the casket, both of them holding the same blue rose. Normally, Ludwig couldn't stand his older brother, but today was different. Today, if Gilbert had suddenly left (as Ludwig wished he would most of the time), he wouldn't have been able to sit through the service. Together, the brothers placed the blue rose next to the red and white ones.

And Ludwig broke.

He kneeled down next to the casket, put one hand over his eyes, and cried. Gilbert softened his expression and rubbed his little brother's back; this was so unlike Ludwig. Ludwig was the rock, he hardly ever cried, yet here he was, kneeled down in front of all of the nations, crying like a child.

Gilbert helped Ludwig to his seat, and then slumped down in his own.

It looked like nobody else was going to go up to visit Alfred, so Ivan, Gilbert, Ludwig, Yao, and Antonio, carried the casket outside, and into the hearse.

Before the doors were shut, Arthur bent over, rested his forehead on the end of the casket, and wept. His friend Francis kneeled down next to him, and wrapped his arms around him, and for once, Arthur accepted his touch.

"Mon Dieu. Why do horrible things like this have to happen to such good people?" He murmured, rubbing the Brit's back. "Il n'est pas juste." It just isn't fair.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Blank shotguns fired to the beat of America's National Anthem as the American Hero was taken out of the hearse and set down in the deep hole.

The [priest, rabbi, etc. say who you'd like here] blessed Alfred, and gave Alfred's jacket to Arthur, who in turn, pressed it against his eyes, trying not to show his tears. But just like Matthew, who was standing next to him, he couldn't hide them.

The [priest, rabbi, etc.] said another blessing, and then asked if anyone wanted to speak.

Jules and Kym were here for this part of the ceremony; Jules was wrapped in Francis's strong arms, and Kym was clinging to Arthur's left leg, crying into the pleats in his pants, when she spoke up. "Me," she said. "I have something to say."

Arthur watched his little girl walk over to the hole that her Daddy was laying in, and on an impulse shouted, "Stop!"

Kym jumped and looked over at Arthur in amazement. "Dad...?"

Arthur unfolded the jacket in his arms and put it on Kym. "Your daddy promised you that you would be able to wear it, so take it..."

Kym smiled and kissed her father on the cheek, before turning back to the six-foot-hole. She gently shrugged it on. "It's heavy," she said, lifting up her hand, which was completely covered with jacket. "But it smells of soft-pretzels and cheeseburgers and Pepsi... like Daddy did!"

Matthew smiled despite himself, and wiped the tears away from his eyes.

The eight-year-old girl saluted her Daddy, the jacket was covering most of her face, but she didn't care. The next thing she said, every other nation around her said in their native languages:

"Vous êtes mon héros." French.

"Sei il mio eroe." Italian.

"Ты мой герой." Belarusian.

"你是我的英雄。" Traditional Chinese.

"Du bist mein Held." German.

"Te vagy az én hősöm." Hungarian.

"Eres mi héroe." Spanish.

"Ты мой герою." Russian.

"You're my hero." English.

You're my hero, America.

~Fin~