Going Rushing to the Sea [1/2]
anonymous
April 4 2009, 08:18:06 UTC
So er. You're totally getting a srs bzns fill?
--
The day after, the boy marches up to America in the middle of what used to be a Dunker church. He is limping and white-pale from blood loss, but is well enough to move and wave a paper of some sort and be so outraged that his shoulders shake.
“That's not what this is about,” he grinds out. His voice has the same rises and dips and slopes that it always does - the sounds of an educated gentleman, for all that his uniform is dirty and there is blood and dirt in his pale hair. “Don't make this something it isn't! How dare you?”
America is wearing no uniform at all. He is most recently of the Sixty-Ninth New York - not so long ago he spoke with his regiment's heavy Irish accent, until they marched toward a sunken road and took so many casualties that it's a wonder there's a regiment left - but the way he appears right now, there's not a single place he can enlist.
He'd be bitter about that, if he were someone else's country.
The boy doesn't even bother to thrust the paper back at him. He just stands there trembling, so angry that it's clear he's fighting to keep his composure. “I know this is to keep England and France away from me,” he says - even quieter now, his voice lowered if not entirely level. “You're not fooling anyone. You don't get to hold the moral high ground here. Stop it.”
“Stop what?” America asks.
The boy stares at him as if he's at an utter loss for words. When he comes back to himself, he grabs the paper in both small hands and shreds it, scattering the pieces in the dirt. A few flutter away in the wind, vanishing to who-knows-where.
“That won't stop it,” America says. “It doesn't work like that.” He is too young himself - and too angry and too proud and too stubborn and so close, the part of him kept out of the regiments cries out, so close - and there is no kindness in his voice.
As he appears now - as he is now - he has no reason to offer the boy anything at all.
*
“You're smarter than I thought,” England says.
In typical fashion, he has commandeered a hapless officer's tent and acquired a table and chair from somewhere. He is dressed in an immaculate frock coat and sits with his hands folded in his lap; even his hair is as neat as can be managed with anything short of superhuman effort.
America has mud all over his boots and is wearing a coat so small that he has to hunch his shoulders to make it fit anywhere close to properly. He hasn't bothered to take off the shapeless lump that passes as his cap, preferring to leave it perched awkwardly on his head.
“I didn't write it or anything,” he says honestly. “It was my boss.”
“I'm sure it was your idea.”
“Some of it,” America admits, because the cost of having “all men are created equal” carved on his bones is that he must believe it, even when most of his people do not.
England leans back in his chair ever-so-slightly and regards America with his head tilted to one side. In return, America manages to slouch without actually leaning on anything; he is blond and blue-eyed right now, the way England and most of the powerful European countries assume he's always been, although the truth is neither America nor anyone else has ever known or will ever know what he really looks like.
“So are you staying out of it?” he asks after the silence makes him want to fidget. “Letting me fix things for myself?”
“I don't have much choice now,” England says. “Your boss makes a better politician than I thought.”
America shrugs. “It's not just about politics,” he says, thinking of pieces of torn paper scattered on the wind.
He doesn't realize he's back in civilian clothes or that he's something different again until he notices England's eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly, the way his mouth tightens at the corners.
“No,” he agrees, his voice so soft that America has to strain to hear him. “No, I suppose it isn't.”
America wonders what it must be like, being a country that isn't a patchwork of languages and customs - what it would be like to not shift in time with his people's changeable conflicting ideas of what he ought to be.
Re: Going Rushing to the Sea [1/2]
anonymous
April 4 2009, 08:35:37 UTC
Not the OP, but a very very impressed reader. Your language is awesome and there are lines there that made me go "ooooooh" in a good way, like the one about having 'all men created equal' carved into his bones. And how England notices his changing. Mmmmmm, yummy~ *shivers happily and waits for the next bit*
Going Rushing to the Sea [2/2 + tasty historical footnotes]
anonymous
April 4 2009, 08:39:20 UTC
“How am I any different from you?” the boy asks once. It is, like all their other conversation, held down the barrel of a gun.
“It's what's on our bones,” America says, because it is the only explanation he can put into words - and when the boy asks how that makes any sense, he doesn't blame him, but he can't think of anything else to say, either.
The war means something to the boy, who is so very proud and so very stubborn and fighting tooth and nail for his right to exist.
In his own way, America is too.
His people just haven't realized that yet.
*
He feels the pull of enlistments and regiments - always the ones that end up in the worst fighting - and wanders from one to the next, swapping language and appearance and religion as he slips between the different parts of his country.
Sometimes he is turned away. On those days he looks down at his hands and thinks oh and finds somewhere relatively safe to sit, where he can wait until he shifts into something else or his people catch up with his ideals.
The first happens less and less these days. His skin remains dark and his hair and eyes remain black and he hears the echoes of the words the boy has carelessly torn up and let loose on the wind. That more than anything tells him that he's on the right track - that he can't and won't let himself come apart at the seams.
If he were any other country in the world - less of an optimist, more self-aware - he would wonder if the second will ever happen at all.
But he isn't any other country, he thinks with a slight grin. That, maybe, is what will save him.
He makes himself comfortable in sight of the recruitment office and waits for his people to catch up.
*
In one sense, the paper and its pretty words don't change much of anything.
The boy is still there, fuming at him across ten thousand battlefields, wounded and bleeding and generally giving as good as he gets. The war is still what it is, shifting and sliding and avoiding definition.
America tugs his uniform's cap down over thick black hair and shifts his grip on his rifle and falls into step with his newest regiment.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
--
historical wtfery:
Obviously this fill took the serious business approach and is all about the Emancipation Proclamation, with a bit about the United States Colored Troops that sidled in when I wasn't looking. In addition to arguably changing the tone of and goals of the war, at least in the North, the Proclamation had the added bonus of keeping England and France from recognizing the Confederacy, because siding against a country that wanted to abolish slavery would not have gone over well at home.
The Dunker church is a reference to the Battle of Antietam. It was an inconclusive Union victory (thnx McClellan), but it gave President Abraham Lincoln enough political clout to issue the Proclamation. The Sixty-Ninth New York took heavy losses in the battle.
A huge chunk of the Union army was composed of immigrants, including thousands of soldiers who didn't speak a whole lot of English. Black regiments didn't exist until after the Proclamation, so if you weren't white enough and still wanted to enlist? Yeah, good luck with that.
The Confederate constitution was almost identical to the regular old American one. Among the changes: it was now unconstitutional to abolish slavery. Oops. :|
The title comes from the “Marching Song of the First Arkansas,” which was either written by or compiled by an officer in an all-black regiment. The line at the end is from the more well-known “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which is sung to the same tune.
Re: Going Rushing to the Sea [2/2 + tasty historical footnotes]
anonymous
April 4 2009, 15:10:32 UTC
That was just beautiful. I don't want to seem silly with gushing, but that was. I also liked how America was constantly shifting around and England seeing it. (Though I would think, especially in more modern times, England probably knows what that's like too.) So...love, love this. <3
England/India, Indian!Arthur. Warnings: dubcon, period racism
anonymous
April 5 2009, 22:31:38 UTC
It is 1858 and sweat is rolling down Arthur's back. It is far too hot for this, but India is spread open underneath him, her eyes closed, her skin shiny with their mingled sweat as he thrusts deeply inside her. He has had glimpses, touches, teasing pieces of her for years, but now there are no companies and sovereign tribal princedoms between them. All her myriad states are vassals to his paramountcy, and she is subject, at last, directly to him. He takes her face in his hands to kiss her, letting his thumbs dig into the bruises she earned in her rebellion, and she opens her mouth obediently for his tongue.
She tastes like France's best wine, like Austria's symphonies, a thousand flavors singing together, sweet and spicy and seductive, cinnamon and coriander and cardamom, almond and anise, turmeric and nutmeg and cumin, crushed mint leaves and coconut and cloves, with the golden glimmer of saffron flirting underneath it all.
He climaxes fiercely, ferociously, his mind lost in the warm slick gold of her body the heavenly taste of her and the warm slick dark gold of her body.
He rolls off her and swipes his damp hair off his forehead, panting hard. He has had more of the globe, at one time or another, than any empire in the history of the world, but there isn't anyone like her. After a few minutes, she slips out the bed and swiftly wraps her sari back around her before padding out of the room. Enough of a breeze drifts through the window from the river that he feels almost human by the time she comes back with their tea. He sits up against the headboard and takes his, prepared just right, while she pours her own.
He sees his hands and almost drops the tea in his lap. He sets his cup on the ornate inlaid tea-tray with a sharp click of porcelain against marble, and holds out his hands, shaking faintly with his sudden fury.
"What have you done to me, you pagan whore?" he demands, staring from her blank brown face to his caramel colored hands, and back again.
She smirks at him.
She smirks at him.
"Several hundred million people across the breadth of a subcontinent have a lot of pull, Arthur-ji, even if you think they don't matter. I am surprised you are no darker."
He gapes at her, appalled.
He is not - remotely -
He is cold rain and plain protestant crosses and jack potatoes and modest wool coats.
His fingers are curled into fists on the sheet, as pale as they ever were. Arthur breathes out, slowly. India's mouth twists in a disapproving moue. "You might have been better off if you kept your tan. It is a month yet before the monsoons, and you burn so easily."
"I'm not going to be here that long," he tells her, firmly. She snorts. Under her breath, she mutters something that might be
Indian!Arthur part 2
anonymous
April 5 2009, 22:38:22 UTC
He doesn't want to be her, but he does like her. He forges miles of steel tracks and drapes them over her like jewelry, his fingers tracing the routes from her breasts to her navel, Bombay and Madras and Calcutta stitched closer together.
"Do you like them?" he askes, as she examines her seminal train system. Her blush is dusk on bronze, and it is so beautiful, he thinks, willing his own face to stay dull beige, though he feels his cheeks heat and glow pink when she smiles and beckons and whispers that yes, Arthur-ji, I like them very much indeed.
*
It is 1914, and Francis's screams are still ringing in his ears. He is covered in mud, still coughing, soaked to his bones and so, so cold. India wraps her arms around him, her black hair mixing with his dirty blond, and she feels so warm.
"Give me a gun," she whispers in his ear, and it's easy, after all the time he's spent training her to march, to aim, to do this one thing in an organized way, so easy to trust her.
She hides her hair under her plain cap and her lush curves under the flat lines of her quickly-filthy uniform. They pray together in the trenches, Matthew in English and French and some Latin on one side, her in a multitude of languages on the other, asking for deliverance from Sri Ram and Krishna and Allah and Amitabha Buddha and Shiva and Mahavira and at one point the Virgin Mary, or at least it sounds like it. Arthur hopes she has better luck reaching her many gods than he's having with his one. He leans closer to her to feel the faint warmth of the tropics still shimmering near her skin, and tries to ignore the dark blotches of her blood.
Indian!Arthur 3/3
anonymous
April 5 2009, 22:47:35 UTC
The War is over and she wants to leave him and that is just. Not acceptable.
She doesn't fight him, but she holds her ground, and every time his knuckles come down on her she is stronger, steadier, more wholly herself, and Arthur feels his feet sliding under him.
"You are mine," he shouts at her, and she remains unmovable, unmoved.
"No," she says. "You are mine."
He gapes at her, and she smiles, a faint, floating smile like an enlightened saint, fond of the poor ignorants. Or like a martyr.
"Those who claim me always surrender in the end," she murmurs, vast and still as the Himalayan peaks. "The Tamils, the Aryans, the Mughals. So many others. They come and they rule and they all fade into me eventually. I already have your tongue. My people speak English in farther-flung places than any of my own languages. I've picked up your fondness for paperwork. It intrigues me. And there are other points of mingling. You will let me go, or you will no longer be able to. Tell me, my proud, white Mughal, are you ready to become one with India?"
He fights her but he can't fight her, because every time she resists his blows and welcomes them at once she is stronger in herself, in her Mahatma and Ahimsa, serenely smiling her tiny secrets-of-the-universe smile, and in the end he can only stand back and let her take her course, inexorable as the waters of Ganga pouring through its riverbed.
*
He lets her go. He watches her flirt with Ivan and he clenches his fists and aches in worry, even though he knows (how he knows) that she is more than able to take care of herself. When she stands up against Ivan and Alfred both, offering the wide embrace of her arms to all the small countries scuttling between the great blocs' shadows, his heart feels like it's going to burst, even though he knows, rationally, that her power and determination have nothing to do with him at all.
Well.
She might never have become so unified, if not for him. So perhaps he can treasure her triumph and take a little pride in her strength after all.
When she smiles at him in passing, brushes his cheek with a kiss as she bustles through the market of the modern world, professional and indomitable and listening to a cricket match on a dented handheld radio, he feels warm even though the streets of London are painted chalk-white with snow. They even talk occasionally, over fish and chips and samosas, discussing the treatment of immigrants and imports of fresh fruit and whether or not Bollywood is even more absurd than the American version. (An unequivocal yes.)
When Arthur comes home he catches a flash of his eyes in the mirror, dark brown and secretive, like he has a few universal truths of his own after all. He grins and licks a bit of stolen chutney off his lips, and wonders how long they'll stay that way.
I'm not the author of the Emancipation Proclamation fill, (whom, may I add, I worship, that fill is so gorgeous) but I saw offhand psuedo-request and I just couldn't resists, orz. Also, I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, but I couldn't write India without her own nation-tan, even if she was subject to the Raj for 250 years.
History-bits:
After the failed sepoy rebellion of 1957, the British crown took official control of India from the East India Company in 1958. In 1976, Queen Victoria was offically proclaimed Empress of India. England allowed/encouraged several companies to build railroads that would eventually become the Indian Railway system, which is currently the single largest employer in the world.
43,000 Indian soldiers died fighting for the Allies in WWI, and 65,000 were wounded. Mohandas Ghandi, also called Mahatma ("Great Soul) embraced the Hindu/Jain/Buddhist principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, and lead a revolution of nonviolent resistance against the British regime. After WWII, Britain granted independence to India and Pakistan.
The Tamils, Aryans, and Mughals are various ethnic/religious/political groups that have invaded India, ruled India, and been absorbed into the melting pot. Or at least, stitched into the fabric. (All of those groups and many, many others remain distinct within India, though they are all considered Indian.) The Mughals were Muslim conquerors who ruled much of North India in the period immediately preceding the Raj.
India has over twenty official languages, all of which predominate in different regions. English is, more or less, the common language of the subcontinent, at least among the educated.
Indian bureaucracy is hell. Full stop. HELL. Why they decided bureaucracy was one of the things about Britain worth adopting, the world may never know.
Ganga is the Indian name for the Ganges, the holiest of the 4 holy rives.
The first president of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, approved of socialist and under him India leaned in that direction. Later, however, India was one of the three founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, that sought to provide a coalition for countries that didn't wish to be dominated by either American or Russian interests during the cold war.
As an anon from India, I approve of this fic. Also, I wonder if the writeranon is Indian or not. XDDD
That said, aaah, you've captured some of the best (and worst) things about India. We have accepted all, the English included. I'll never know that thing about the Bureaucracy either. Just. No. ._.
The language is beautiful and sensual and the imagery is excellent. It reminded me of Indian summers and considering I'm already in it, it's not really pleasant. XDD
Also yes, India was closer to Soviet than to USA, and helped in founding NAM. We still have a Communist party, and the Eastern part of the nation is still dominated by them (and they are close to China as well, geographically).
India should have a nation-tan, and considering that India is as old as China, if not older, it surprises me that there isn't already.
Also, sorry for babbling about the country instead of the fic. Loved your Arthur as well. XD *runs*
As an anon from India, I approve of this fic. Also, I wonder if the writeranon is Indian or not.
Possibly the highest compliment I could receive, I think, and thank you kindly. I am not Indian either ethnically or nationally, (european mutt and American, respectively), but I did live in India for a very formative period in my life and I love the country deeply.
That said, aaah, you've captured some of the best (and worst) things about India.
Oh, no wait, there's that compliment. Honestly, thank you so, so much.
India should have a nation-tan, and considering that India is as old as China, if not older, it surprises me that there isn't already.
I half want an India-tan in canon so that there will be more love for her in the fandom, but the other half is certain that any canon portrayal could not possibly match the tan I would want to see, and that would drive me crazy.
Also, HOW BADLY do I want an epic epic epic China/India story entitled "The Girl Next Door" that skims several millenia of history and mostly looks at the cultural differences, and the companionship that exists between them nonetheless, because there are so many things no one else remembers, and ends with them getting married fifty years in the future, and she fixes his political problems and he fixes her organizational problems and then they take over the world?
--
The day after, the boy marches up to America in the middle of what used to be a Dunker church. He is limping and white-pale from blood loss, but is well enough to move and wave a paper of some sort and be so outraged that his shoulders shake.
“That's not what this is about,” he grinds out. His voice has the same rises and dips and slopes that it always does - the sounds of an educated gentleman, for all that his uniform is dirty and there is blood and dirt in his pale hair. “Don't make this something it isn't! How dare you?”
America is wearing no uniform at all. He is most recently of the Sixty-Ninth New York - not so long ago he spoke with his regiment's heavy Irish accent, until they marched toward a sunken road and took so many casualties that it's a wonder there's a regiment left - but the way he appears right now, there's not a single place he can enlist.
He'd be bitter about that, if he were someone else's country.
The boy doesn't even bother to thrust the paper back at him. He just stands there trembling, so angry that it's clear he's fighting to keep his composure. “I know this is to keep England and France away from me,” he says - even quieter now, his voice lowered if not entirely level. “You're not fooling anyone. You don't get to hold the moral high ground here. Stop it.”
“Stop what?” America asks.
The boy stares at him as if he's at an utter loss for words. When he comes back to himself, he grabs the paper in both small hands and shreds it, scattering the pieces in the dirt. A few flutter away in the wind, vanishing to who-knows-where.
“That won't stop it,” America says. “It doesn't work like that.” He is too young himself - and too angry and too proud and too stubborn and so close, the part of him kept out of the regiments cries out, so close - and there is no kindness in his voice.
As he appears now - as he is now - he has no reason to offer the boy anything at all.
*
“You're smarter than I thought,” England says.
In typical fashion, he has commandeered a hapless officer's tent and acquired a table and chair from somewhere. He is dressed in an immaculate frock coat and sits with his hands folded in his lap; even his hair is as neat as can be managed with anything short of superhuman effort.
America has mud all over his boots and is wearing a coat so small that he has to hunch his shoulders to make it fit anywhere close to properly. He hasn't bothered to take off the shapeless lump that passes as his cap, preferring to leave it perched awkwardly on his head.
“I didn't write it or anything,” he says honestly. “It was my boss.”
“I'm sure it was your idea.”
“Some of it,” America admits, because the cost of having “all men are created equal” carved on his bones is that he must believe it, even when most of his people do not.
England leans back in his chair ever-so-slightly and regards America with his head tilted to one side. In return, America manages to slouch without actually leaning on anything; he is blond and blue-eyed right now, the way England and most of the powerful European countries assume he's always been, although the truth is neither America nor anyone else has ever known or will ever know what he really looks like.
“So are you staying out of it?” he asks after the silence makes him want to fidget. “Letting me fix things for myself?”
“I don't have much choice now,” England says. “Your boss makes a better politician than I thought.”
America shrugs. “It's not just about politics,” he says, thinking of pieces of torn paper scattered on the wind.
He doesn't realize he's back in civilian clothes or that he's something different again until he notices England's eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly, the way his mouth tightens at the corners.
“No,” he agrees, his voice so soft that America has to strain to hear him. “No, I suppose it isn't.”
America wonders what it must be like, being a country that isn't a patchwork of languages and customs - what it would be like to not shift in time with his people's changeable conflicting ideas of what he ought to be.
*
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“It's what's on our bones,” America says, because it is the only explanation he can put into words - and when the boy asks how that makes any sense, he doesn't blame him, but he can't think of anything else to say, either.
The war means something to the boy, who is so very proud and so very stubborn and fighting tooth and nail for his right to exist.
In his own way, America is too.
His people just haven't realized that yet.
*
He feels the pull of enlistments and regiments - always the ones that end up in the worst fighting - and wanders from one to the next, swapping language and appearance and religion as he slips between the different parts of his country.
Sometimes he is turned away. On those days he looks down at his hands and thinks oh and finds somewhere relatively safe to sit, where he can wait until he shifts into something else or his people catch up with his ideals.
The first happens less and less these days. His skin remains dark and his hair and eyes remain black and he hears the echoes of the words the boy has carelessly torn up and let loose on the wind. That more than anything tells him that he's on the right track - that he can't and won't let himself come apart at the seams.
If he were any other country in the world - less of an optimist, more self-aware - he would wonder if the second will ever happen at all.
But he isn't any other country, he thinks with a slight grin. That, maybe, is what will save him.
He makes himself comfortable in sight of the recruitment office and waits for his people to catch up.
*
In one sense, the paper and its pretty words don't change much of anything.
The boy is still there, fuming at him across ten thousand battlefields, wounded and bleeding and generally giving as good as he gets. The war is still what it is, shifting and sliding and avoiding definition.
America tugs his uniform's cap down over thick black hair and shifts his grip on his rifle and falls into step with his newest regiment.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
--
historical wtfery:
Obviously this fill took the serious business approach and is all about the Emancipation Proclamation, with a bit about the United States Colored Troops that sidled in when I wasn't looking. In addition to arguably changing the tone of and goals of the war, at least in the North, the Proclamation had the added bonus of keeping England and France from recognizing the Confederacy, because siding against a country that wanted to abolish slavery would not have gone over well at home.
The Dunker church is a reference to the Battle of Antietam. It was an inconclusive Union victory (thnx McClellan), but it gave President Abraham Lincoln enough political clout to issue the Proclamation. The Sixty-Ninth New York took heavy losses in the battle.
A huge chunk of the Union army was composed of immigrants, including thousands of soldiers who didn't speak a whole lot of English. Black regiments didn't exist until after the Proclamation, so if you weren't white enough and still wanted to enlist? Yeah, good luck with that.
The Confederate constitution was almost identical to the regular old American one. Among the changes: it was now unconstitutional to abolish slavery. Oops. :|
The title comes from the “Marching Song of the First Arkansas,” which was either written by or compiled by an officer in an all-black regiment. The line at the end is from the more well-known “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which is sung to the same tune.
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Ahahahahhaa yes.
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She tastes like France's best wine, like Austria's symphonies, a thousand flavors singing together, sweet and spicy and seductive, cinnamon and coriander and cardamom, almond and anise, turmeric and nutmeg and cumin, crushed mint leaves and coconut and cloves, with the golden glimmer of saffron flirting underneath it all.
He climaxes fiercely, ferociously, his mind lost in the warm slick gold of her body the heavenly taste of her and the warm slick dark gold of her body.
He rolls off her and swipes his damp hair off his forehead, panting hard. He has had more of the globe, at one time or another, than any empire in the history of the world, but there isn't anyone like her. After a few minutes, she slips out the bed and swiftly wraps her sari back around her before padding out of the room. Enough of a breeze drifts through the window from the river that he feels almost human by the time she comes back with their tea. He sits up against the headboard and takes his, prepared just right, while she pours her own.
He sees his hands and almost drops the tea in his lap. He sets his cup on the ornate inlaid tea-tray with a sharp click of porcelain against marble, and holds out his hands, shaking faintly with his sudden fury.
"What have you done to me, you pagan whore?" he demands, staring from her blank brown face to his caramel colored hands, and back again.
She smirks at him.
She smirks at him.
"Several hundred million people across the breadth of a subcontinent have a lot of pull, Arthur-ji, even if you think they don't matter. I am surprised you are no darker."
He gapes at her, appalled.
He is not - remotely -
He is cold rain and plain protestant crosses and jack potatoes and modest wool coats.
His fingers are curled into fists on the sheet, as pale as they ever were. Arthur breathes out, slowly. India's mouth twists in a disapproving moue. "You might have been better off if you kept your tan. It is a month yet before the monsoons, and you burn so easily."
"I'm not going to be here that long," he tells her, firmly. She snorts. Under her breath, she mutters something that might be
"That's what they all say," but he can't be sure.
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"Do you like them?" he askes, as she examines her seminal train system. Her blush is dusk on bronze, and it is so beautiful, he thinks, willing his own face to stay dull beige, though he feels his cheeks heat and glow pink when she smiles and beckons and whispers that yes, Arthur-ji, I like them very much indeed.
*
It is 1914, and Francis's screams are still ringing in his ears. He is covered in mud, still coughing, soaked to his bones and so, so cold. India wraps her arms around him, her black hair mixing with his dirty blond, and she feels so warm.
"Give me a gun," she whispers in his ear, and it's easy, after all the time he's spent training her to march, to aim, to do this one thing in an organized way, so easy to trust her.
She hides her hair under her plain cap and her lush curves under the flat lines of her quickly-filthy uniform. They pray together in the trenches, Matthew in English and French and some Latin on one side, her in a multitude of languages on the other, asking for deliverance from Sri Ram and Krishna and Allah and Amitabha Buddha and Shiva and Mahavira and at one point the Virgin Mary, or at least it sounds like it. Arthur hopes she has better luck reaching her many gods than he's having with his one. He leans closer to her to feel the faint warmth of the tropics still shimmering near her skin, and tries to ignore the dark blotches of her blood.
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She doesn't fight him, but she holds her ground, and every time his knuckles come down on her she is stronger, steadier, more wholly herself, and Arthur feels his feet sliding under him.
"You are mine," he shouts at her, and she remains unmovable, unmoved.
"No," she says. "You are mine."
He gapes at her, and she smiles, a faint, floating smile like an enlightened saint, fond of the poor ignorants. Or like a martyr.
"Those who claim me always surrender in the end," she murmurs, vast and still as the Himalayan peaks. "The Tamils, the Aryans, the Mughals. So many others. They come and they rule and they all fade into me eventually. I already have your tongue. My people speak English in farther-flung places than any of my own languages. I've picked up your fondness for paperwork. It intrigues me. And there are other points of mingling. You will let me go, or you will no longer be able to. Tell me, my proud, white Mughal, are you ready to become one with India?"
He fights her but he can't fight her, because every time she resists his blows and welcomes them at once she is stronger in herself, in her Mahatma and Ahimsa, serenely smiling her tiny secrets-of-the-universe smile, and in the end he can only stand back and let her take her course, inexorable as the waters of Ganga pouring through its riverbed.
*
He lets her go. He watches her flirt with Ivan and he clenches his fists and aches in worry, even though he knows (how he knows) that she is more than able to take care of herself. When she stands up against Ivan and Alfred both, offering the wide embrace of her arms to all the small countries scuttling between the great blocs' shadows, his heart feels like it's going to burst, even though he knows, rationally, that her power and determination have nothing to do with him at all.
Well.
She might never have become so unified, if not for him. So perhaps he can treasure her triumph and take a little pride in her strength after all.
When she smiles at him in passing, brushes his cheek with a kiss as she bustles through the market of the modern world, professional and indomitable and listening to a cricket match on a dented handheld radio, he feels warm even though the streets of London are painted chalk-white with snow. They even talk occasionally, over fish and chips and samosas, discussing the treatment of immigrants and imports of fresh fruit and whether or not Bollywood is even more absurd than the American version. (An unequivocal yes.)
When Arthur comes home he catches a flash of his eyes in the mirror, dark brown and secretive, like he has a few universal truths of his own after all. He grins and licks a bit of stolen chutney off his lips, and wonders how long they'll stay that way.
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History-bits:
After the failed sepoy rebellion of 1957, the British crown took official control of India from the East India Company in 1958. In 1976, Queen Victoria was offically proclaimed Empress of India. England allowed/encouraged several companies to build railroads that would eventually become the Indian Railway system, which is currently the single largest employer in the world.
43,000 Indian soldiers died fighting for the Allies in WWI, and 65,000 were wounded. Mohandas Ghandi, also called Mahatma ("Great Soul) embraced the Hindu/Jain/Buddhist principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence, and lead a revolution of nonviolent resistance against the British regime. After WWII, Britain granted independence to India and Pakistan.
The Tamils, Aryans, and Mughals are various ethnic/religious/political groups that have invaded India, ruled India, and been absorbed into the melting pot. Or at least, stitched into the fabric. (All of those groups and many, many others remain distinct within India, though they are all considered Indian.) The Mughals were Muslim conquerors who ruled much of North India in the period immediately preceding the Raj.
India has over twenty official languages, all of which predominate in different regions. English is, more or less, the common language of the subcontinent, at least among the educated.
Indian bureaucracy is hell. Full stop. HELL. Why they decided bureaucracy was one of the things about Britain worth adopting, the world may never know.
Ganga is the Indian name for the Ganges, the holiest of the 4 holy rives.
The first president of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, approved of socialist and under him India leaned in that direction. Later, however, India was one of the three founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, that sought to provide a coalition for countries that didn't wish to be dominated by either American or Russian interests during the cold war.
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Also, the deities India prays to during the WWI scene are:
Sri Ram and Krishna - human incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, the preserver
Shiva - another Hindu god, the destroyer
Allah - the name of God in Islam
Amitabha Buddha - the Indian name for boddhisattva savior figure in Pure Land devotional Buddhism.
Mahavira - the last of the great holy teachers in Jainism.
Also, I feel bad for forgetting the Sihks. India prayed to that God too, but Arthur just didn't catch it. ^_^
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recaptcha: Mathieu Fek
No, no Canada this time, recaptcha. O_o
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THANK YOU for doing this. Why don't we have India in Hetalia?!?! :(
(Captcha sez "Loving Roses")
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That said, aaah, you've captured some of the best (and worst) things about India. We have accepted all, the English included. I'll never know that thing about the Bureaucracy either. Just. No. ._.
The language is beautiful and sensual and the imagery is excellent. It reminded me of Indian summers and considering I'm already in it, it's not really pleasant. XDD
Also yes, India was closer to Soviet than to USA, and helped in founding NAM. We still have a Communist party, and the Eastern part of the nation is still dominated by them (and they are close to China as well, geographically).
India should have a nation-tan, and considering that India is as old as China, if not older, it surprises me that there isn't already.
Also, sorry for babbling about the country instead of the fic. Loved your Arthur as well. XD *runs*
Sculptures taketh, o rly captcha?
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Possibly the highest compliment I could receive, I think, and thank you kindly. I am not Indian either ethnically or nationally, (european mutt and American, respectively), but I did live in India for a very formative period in my life and I love the country deeply.
That said, aaah, you've captured some of the best (and worst) things about India.
Oh, no wait, there's that compliment. Honestly, thank you so, so much.
India should have a nation-tan, and considering that India is as old as China, if not older, it surprises me that there isn't already.
I half want an India-tan in canon so that there will be more love for her in the fandom, but the other half is certain that any canon portrayal could not possibly match the tan I would want to see, and that would drive me crazy.
Also, HOW BADLY do I want an epic epic epic China/India story entitled "The Girl Next Door" that skims several millenia of history and mostly looks at the cultural differences, and the companionship that exists between them nonetheless, because there are so many things no one else remembers, and ends with them getting married fifty years in the future, and she fixes his political problems and he fixes her organizational problems and then they take over the world?
Answer: Very, very badly.
...uh, /tangent.
sorry for babbling about the country
*geeks out over India with you*
Thank you again. *chases you playfully*
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