We Were

Friends

We Were works as a prequel to both All in the Family and The Life that Never Lived, despite a few minor continuity things in between the two worlds, the main point is that this is the background to these characters for both stories and while it's of course not mandatory you read this fic first to follow along, it is recommended as you get plopped in the middle of All in the Family from the end of chapter five of this one.

I've meant to do this for years honestly, but it was always one thing right after another. Better late than never, right?

Some things will diverge slightly from my Life that Never Lived Series, and very much so from All in the Family. While the core of them have remained the same and the memories and stories I wrote during my reading the books fics are all going to be found in the following chapters, some things will be slightly off or vaguely different, I have changed a bit over the years.

In saying that, this is meant as an unofficial prequal to The Life that Never Lived and All in the Family, acknowledging some tiny continuity mishaps along the way.

I still hope you enjoy.

HPHPHPHPHP

July- 1971

Peter was sitting on his windowsill, watching the passersby in the street below attentively for no good reason he could ever give his mother. There were plenty of boys at the end of the square he could actually be running around with, but they had a tendency to get bored and start picking on him if he didn't keep up, the only reason he was sure they ever put up with him was because they knew who patched up their clothes. Still, he'd come away with a black eye last time and wasn't keen to repeat that.

There was a half done puzzle on the floor behind him he still wanted to finish before he went to St. Charlie's in the fall, he knew he should put away his folded laundry mother had left on his bed hours ago, but instead he sat and watched the busy afternoon traffic as a mother pushed a carriage along with one hand and harrassed expression as she held onto a toddling boy with the other, two teenagers on their front stoop snogging, and a squat woman appearing quite out of nowhere almost in the middle of two elderly gentleman's cribbage game, tucking something up under her strange outfit as she began looking keenly at the nearest house at the opposite end of the block.

Something swooped right up to his window, he squealed and fell off the sill as it seemed to be headed straight for him.

His alarmed face still had the odd, pointed features he loathed so much in his reflection, his watery brown eyes squinted suspiciously to see the owl now tapping at the glass separating him, or at least trying to, with something clasped in its beak.

"Mum!" He called, but she didn't respond, and he belatedly remembered she was with a client and wouldn't come running unless he screamed bloody murder. They needed the money he knew, this wasn't so odd to interrupt her, was it?

He'd never even seen an owl before, let alone in broad daylight, but this one was being oddly persistent. Even the rowdy boys stopped their game and were starting to look up and notice, so Peter eased to his feet and unlatched the window rather than this somehow escalating, imaging one of them coming to tattle to his mum he was doing it somehow.

The bird hopped in, and Peter quickly sprung away, but it merely dropped the envelope and swooped back out. Peter didn't realize his mouth was hanging open until his curtains nearly flew in, and he had to spit them out as his trembling fingers reached for it.

It was an odd, heavy sort of paper he'd never felt before, the red crest staring up at him even more strange, four animals all encircling a large H, the amount of detail in it was astounding, he could perfectly make out what each was meant to be, and the letter H looked like calligraphy.