#au.kat

Alfred goes missing somewhere in 1944. For decades it remained one the greatest mysteries left unsolved. Multiple expeditions were sent out to locate him, but it was as if he simply vanished into thin air. Due to the ongoing war, searches eventually were cut to focus on the war effort.

Days before his death, FDR confessed that one of his greatest regrets he would carry into the afterlife would be that he wouldn't be there when Alfred came back. Eleanor Roosevelt would speak often of him, and would become pivotal in advocating for the preservation of his memory- especially after nps became more public.

His family would look for Alfred during his own time. Matthew was the hardest one to search for him. Day and night the haunting absence of his brother weighed on him. Nps can feel the presence of another, even more so when they share a border. This is amplified when that no also happens to be a superpower. It's as if the sun is always on your back; overbearing, loud. A thousand screaming trains that threaten to consume Matthew if he ever let's himself get pulled in- gone in a blink. For decades there is nothing but this hollow wound that tears at Matthew's core. This becomes known when Matthew has a crash out on Arthur when his father is the final vote to call off the official UN search for Alfred in 1987.

Time moves on, even in the absence of a nation. The need for nps is consistently put into question the longer Alfred is gone. The US is still a superpower. It has not collapsed. It grows in influence. Do nations need nps? Or do the nps need nations? A growing movement forms within the US for other countries to remove their nps. Not much attention is given to them since cults and conspiracy groups are common within the US.

The empires of the world crumble. The space race, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Olympics, world fairs, revolutions, new nations, genocides, weapons, famine, health advancements, technology, war, coups, intelligence manipulation; all of it moves on, all of it without Alfred. One of the key nations of the world and he isn't there. The nps move on too. Eventually, Matthew learns to exist in the silence.

2025. The silence gets broken.

This got long, but tdlr Alfred tested a really experimental piece of technology to help with moving mass amounts of supplies for the war only it was miscalculated and rather than just zapping through space he also got sent through time and pops back up in Greenland wondering wtf happened to the Bluie East Two airbase. The group in charge of that mission burned all the files and took that information to their graves. Better to not say anything than admit they lost their np. No official outside of the group knew about it, and Alfred didn't even really know what the mission was beyond testing new equipment on his P-51 Mustang, the Pond Hopper.

somebody do something. im begging someone to do something. oh my god there are so many good details here and like. ARTHUR BEING THE DECIDING VOTE? and i know why too. i know that man. oh my god, def something he would do. alfred gets back and the world is so different. oh my god. was on the edge of my seat the whole time. and the thing is that he cant go back and relive those years which i think- wait this is just captain america.

WAAAIAIIIITTTT THIS IS SO COOL YOU ARE SOOOOOO COOL I LOVE THAT. i wonder if you decide that she was born during the war, if it would be related to emancipation? or you could very well have her be born before that point as a result maybe of the first generations of enslaved people being born on the continent and creating their own merged culture, and the growth spurt as you said later on. both are interesting you could go either way!! i love and agree with everything you said here and honestly? it is much more interesting to have the someone like your oc be born of the war rather than some evil version of alfred to put all the blame on so that he can seem cleaner. those stories can be interesting to me but theyre almost a little reductive at times. idk idk maybe im crazy. let alfred be problematic sometimes people. so i really like your idea as an alternative to that sort of narrative that explores the very complicated relationship between america and the "freed" black population after the war. as we all know it wasn't immediately sunshine and rainbows for them after that and there are still struggles to this day but thats not something americans often learn about? at least as a white person in the school system after emancipation we go straight to the civil rights movement concerning the history of african americans. we all know thats not true and the american school system fails us, blah blah blah, so its been really cool to grow up and research these things on my own especially as someone who lives in an area sometimes considered to be the deep south. UGH I LOVE THIS IDEA. kissing you. hope i didn't say anything weird because that is never my intention.

So grains in medieval Europe were highly associated with class and thus wealth - serfs and peasants wound up eating coarser heartier things like oats, barley, etc, to hit their nutritional needs, while the creme de la creme (royalty) ate primarily wheat in the form of flour/white bread. If I remember correctly, it's something about the whiteness->purity, and you should seek out good pure foods to put into your body. The labor requirement for wheat and thus white bread also was much higher and thus again, natural restriction to the upper classes.

Further, while medieval Europe definitely had sweet things, there was no sugar. The closest you could get was honey (and they did a lot of beekeeping! there's lots of very sweet illuminations of bees and beehives in various manuscripts and/or books of hours!) Which means while they probably had syrups and similar from concentrations of fruit, there was no jellies or jams as we understand them today.

Your comment about Alfred giving Arthur a pb&j was perhaps one of the best ways to absolutely rock his world. It's the ideal food to introduce to a child version of Arthur Kirkland.

OMG HELLO FRIEND i am so tickled to see you here in my askbox and this was so great not only because of how silly it is to consider but also because you know your stuff OBVIOUSLY and its so interesting to learn about how people ate back then because eating is such a cultural unifying human thing. and i think alfred would try to consider that maybe taking him to taco bell would be a really bad idea for 6 different reasons but alfred's idea of Old Food is still 100s of years later than little medieval arthur. but he would try ok. he would make a pb&j and share it with The Boy and arthur is like--why is this bread stark white and sweet. *googles something* what is a peanut and how is it butter. what the devil did you do to this grape. this isn't a grape. HE PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN RECOGNIZE THE JELLY AS BEING GRAPE ADJACENT. aaaand like you said the sugar content of jelly--probably smuckers in this situation--is through the roof.

Arthur has to be really confused, plus the fact that pretty much everyone he knew is either dead, or way older than him now but hey at least he’ll be experiencing fast food for the first time, or eating since i doubt he was getting proper nutrition due to the famines at the time, and hey Alfred gets to understand Arthur better, so it’s not all bad