Chapter Text
The humid July heat clung to Baltimore like a damp shroud, but it was the icy weight in Alfred’s chest that truly bothered him. It was the Fourth of July, 1831, and the world expected him to be celebratory. Instead, the young personification sat on a weathered stone bench, his knees pulled up to his chest, mourning the passing of James Monroe—his fifth "father" figure gone to the earth.
Arthur Kirkland, England, had arrived with a practiced, smug air, intending to offer a backhanded consolation that would remind Alfred who was the elder. He smoothed his coat, ready to patronize, but halted. He saw Alfred not as a brash, loud nation, but as a boy quietly mourning.
Before Arthur could step forward, a figure drifted out of the shadows of the nearby trees. He was a man of melancholic grace, his dark hair a disheveled cascade that seemed to frame a face permanently etched with sorrow. He wore a coat that had seen better days, smelling faintly of old parchment and the sea. He sat beside Alfred without asking, his presence oddly grounding, like the silence that follows a storm.
"You seem to be carrying a burden that exceeds your years," the man said, his voice a low, gravelly tenor.
Alfred wiped his eyes, startled. "Who are you to ask? And what would you know about it?"
The stranger stared into the distance. "I am Edgar. I do not know your specific tragedy, but I know the shape of it. I have laid my own mother and my foster mother into the cold ground, taken by the consumption. Loss... it leaves a mark that never truly fades." He reached out, his long, pale fingers gently brushing the moisture from Alfred’s cheek.
Arthur, lurking near a hedge, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He squinted. "Wait... isn't that the quiet boy from Reverend Bransby's school? The one who spent every waking hour with his nose in a book?"
Oblivious, Alfred looked at the man. "I'm currently... at odds with the President. Jackson. It’s hard when the house you represent feels like it's pulling itself apart."
Edgar nodded slowly. "I know that estrangement well. I bear the name 'Allan' as a middle name, yet I am a stranger to the man who gave it to me."
The tension in Alfred’s shoulders dropped. He looked at this morose, intense man and saw a mirror. "I'm Alfred. I think... I think I'd like to be your friend, Edgar." He paused, looking at the man's hollow, tired eyes. "Are you okay?"
Edgar shook his head, a ghost of a wry smile touching his lips. "I am currently occupied with the futile attempt to survive by the pen. I write, though the world rarely listens."
Arthur stepped into view, his face contorted in a mix of shock and dawning horror. "Oh... son of a bitch."
But Alfred was already beaming, the spark of his usual energy returning. "It's my birthday today, Edgar. What could I possibly want? I want to read what you've written."
Edgar’s expression softened. He spoke of his new collection, Poems (1831), printed in New York. He described the "Letter to Mr. ——" where he dissected the craft of poetry, and the haunting lines of "The City in the Sea" and "Israfel." He didn't offer a celebratory gift; he offered his soul on paper.
As the summer progressed, the contrast between them became a fixture of the Baltimore streets. Alfred was the golden retriever to Edgar’s somber, obsidian cat. Edgar loathed the artificiality of sweets, preferring the bitter sting of black coffee and the sharp, salty tang of cheap seafood—a diet that led the superstitious neighbors to whisper that the man was a Papist. When the town whispered, Alfred—blessed with strength that could move mountains—worked grueling odd jobs to ensure Edgar had fresh vegetables and the occasional cut of land meat to quiet the gossip, never telling him why the food was suddenly so abundant.
When August arrived, it brought the death of Edgar’s brother, Henry. The grief nearly shattered the poet. He sat in the dark, silent and hollow, until he felt the familiar, warm weight of Alfred sitting beside him. When Edgar, in a moment of pure, unanchored misery, reached out and pulled Alfred into a desperate, grounding embrace, the nation didn't pull away. He held him, offering the stability of a steady heartbeat.
Months later, when asked about the boisterous nation-personification who refused to leave his side, Edgar would sigh, leaning back in his chair with a cup of bitter coffee.
"Ever had that dog who would still cling to you even when you are at your worst?" he mused, his eyes uncharacteristically soft. "It’s clear the dog is well-meaning even if you try to shoo it away, only to give up and let the unauthorized snuggles happen? Alfred is like that. He just… stays. He won’t let you be overwhelmed, even when the world is chaotic. You can’t help but let him stick around."
And for all his arrogance, Arthur Kirkland could only watch from the periphery, silenced by the realization that his former pupil had found a home not in the halls of power, but in the deepest, darkest corners of a poet's heart.
The White House in July 1831 was a place of stifling, humid tension, and for Andrew Jackson, it had become a tomb of silence.
The President stood in the center of what was supposed to be Alfred’s bedroom. He gripped the doorframe, his knuckles white, his legendary temper subdued by a gnawing, unfamiliar pit of dread in his stomach. He had expected the boy—that rambunctious, golden-haired whirlwind—to be hiding under the covers or perhaps raiding the kitchen for a midnight snack. Instead, the room was pristine. The bed was made with a clinical, haunting precision that felt entirely wrong for the nation personification. There was no note. Alfred, usually so prone to dramatic proclamations and loud entrances, had simply vanished into the ether.
Jackson rubbed his eyes, a grimace of frustration crossing his rugged face. He knew his literacy was a subject of mockery among the elite, but he didn't need to read a note to understand the void. He knew exactly what he had done. He knew that his hard-line stance, his unrelenting pursuit of the Indian Removal Act, had transformed the air in the mansion. He had felt Alfred’s vibrant, youthful presence pull back, turning from a warm glow into a cold, distant flicker of disapproval. He had pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until the boy had simply stopped pushing back.
"Damn it all," Jackson growled, his voice echoing off the high, hollow ceilings of the executive mansion.
He marched out into the hallway, his boots thumping like war drums against the floorboards. He felt the weight of the nation shifting, a strange, sickening tug in the back of his mind that reminded him the country’s physical embodiment was currently untethered from his governance. He reached the grand staircase and let out a roar that startled the servants, his pride entirely discarded in favor of a desperate, primal need to restore order.
"ALFRED!"
He paced the length of the hall, his hand resting instinctively on the cold steel at his hip, though he had no enemy to duel today—only his own guilt.
"I'M SORRY ABOUT WHAT I DID TO DRIVE YOU AWAY!"
The admission tasted like bile, but it was the truth. He understood, in his own visceral, hardened way, that he had been too heavy-handed. He had treated the nation like an unruly soldier rather than the living soul of the land.
"COME BACK TO THE WHITE HOUSE!" he shouted again, his voice cracking, bouncing off the portraits of his predecessors.
He lunged toward the front entrance, throwing the heavy doors open and staring out into the humid, grey Washington sky, expecting to see the boy lounging on the lawn. Nothing but the heat haze and the distant, uncaring buzz of cicadas greeted him.
"ALFRED!?"
His voice dropped to a ragged, frantic shout that carried across the gardens, stripping away the presidential veneer.
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU!?"
There was no answer, only the rustling of leaves. Jackson stood on the portico, the most powerful man in the country realizing, with a jolt of genuine terror, that he had alienated the one thing he could never command. He was the President, but he was currently the master of an empty house, and the nation—his boy—had gone to find solace in the arms of a man who understood sorrow far better than a politician ever could.