Fic: Lumos
Title: Lumos
Characters: France/England (Francis/Arthur), strongly implied relationship
Rating: T - for language and the usual threats where these two are involved, mentions of blood and death in nightmare
Summary: France wakes up suddenly from a nightmare and England soothes him back to sleep with a fantasy adventure story. Initial laughter until England realises it's serious.
A/N: For the aph_fluffathon, although it got hopelessly off-track.
~*~*~*~*~
When you have over 62 and a half million people in your heart and head, you’re bound to have a few bad dreams now and then. People, millions and millions of people for over two thousand years, living souls and lost souls and souls gone to rest, shifting and clamouring in the blood beating through their Nation’s veins -
Mud. France dreams of mud, dark and dank and brown and red, men face-down and drowning in it, speared through the back with spears and arrows, sword-slashed and gurgling. All the years meet and mingle in his mind’s eye, armoured knights dead beside bare backs covered in blue woad, camouflaged soldiers in tin-hat helmets going down with bullets through their foreheads, smashing into the surf and sand, sand, sand (choke on it), far as the eye can see, into the burning sun and the French red cross burning for a holy war, the white one too. Storms in the sky and meteors at night, straw huts burning by the shore as the cold heathens come by boat again and again to sack home and hearth and holy places until they finally settle like burrowing ants in the skin. The world feels like it’s ending with the sound of thunder - buildings falling and cannon fire and marching, marching feet. Romans and Normans and Angevins and English, Austrians and Prussians and British and Germans (friends, were they never friends) and there’s sharp wire wrapped around France’s feet and hands and neck that leaves a red ribbon line like the ones his ladies showed with diamonds (the ones that kept their heads).
The stars - even the stars change after so long, and there’s no glory or comfort in the stars or the stories when it’s like this. The diamonds fade beside America and Russia smiling and everything cracks and sears under white heat. France feels so, so small because it all slips away, his children and his place and his friends and allies, black boils to black holes that eat up his existence. He’s back in the black mud again with the black starless sky above, and everything is utterly broken and quiet. The bodies around him are faceless (France tells himself he cannot see ribbons or glasses or green eyes or silver-white hair, a green cloak wrapped around a fierce little islander he sang old French lullabies to to send the boy to sleep), cold and uncomforting because the world’s a dead place, no world at all anymore because they all loathed each other too much to share it. And the bodies keep bleeding and the mud keeps rising, and France sinks into it as it rises, over his chest and neck and mouth and nose and ey-
“Yagh.”
There’s no word quite like the sound France makes when the train he's riding on jolts suddenly over a bump in the tracks, cracking his sleep-lolled head into the window beside him. He groans afterwards though, raising a heavy hand from its resting place in his lap to rub at his now aching skull.
“Did you sleep well?”
The world is muzzy still; France blinks slumber out of his eyes to fix a bleary glare on the green-gold blur sitting opposite him at one of the train’s tables - Arthur, cher Angleterre, still fixed on the novel France had seen him pull out of his bag as soon as they’d taken their seats at London’s King’s Cross just before seven that evening. The overhead lights make it look like he has honey in his hair, blurred around the edges, soft shadows belied by the sharp tongue he keeps in his mouth.
England doesn’t bother to wait for a reply, turning another page in his book with utter disinterest. One mustn’t show one actually has a heart, of course not. Not in public. “You’ve been out of it around two hours - you still look like shit, by the way.”
Francis debates kicking him just to get a human response from his pet statue, but their legs are jostled (comfortably) too close with their bags under the table and if he tried he’d probably spill both of their belongings everywhere and have to chase fiddly things up and down the length of the carriage. (Francis will punch the rosbif when they get to Edinburgh instead.) Two hours feels like two centuries - and France’s head hurts, aching with old memories and the rap he’d given it on the windowpane. “’Ow long until we arrive?”
“We’re due in around half-past eleven -” England pauses then, apparently sensing more than seeing the look France fixes on him, sour under the artificial lights. (Arthur is never to be allowed to arrange their transport again.) Magic. He looks up - Francis sees the faint hint of purple at his collar, a loving token he’d given the other earlier that day with his teeth. “You were the one who suggested we take the last train of the day, frog.”
“Because I was intending to rest in bed this morning,” France glares back, remembering warm sheets still smelling of sex and sunlight, the beautiful morning lethargy spoilt by the empty spot in the bed beside him and a familiar stench rising up the stairs of England’s home. The carriage around them is mostly empty, thank God, save for one or two souls near the doors at the end. It’s late; sensible people took earlier trains, and the world could be only them. “Before someone decided he was going to get up and smoke out the kitchen. Mon Dieu, you’d think you could learn how to cook a basic brunch after two thousand years -”
“I - it’s my home and if I want to test out my smoke-alarm-”
“For the tenth time this month?”
“It’s absolutely none of your business.” Arthur always goes such a delightful shade of pink.
France just snorts, lifting a strand of blond hair out of his eyes. “It becomes the business of the world when you try to shove the abominable attempts you call ‘cooking’ down our throats, Angleterre. How it is you manage to continually find replacement ovens that connect directly to Hell is beyond me; because the…the things that come out of those appliances have to have come directly from the Devil himself -”
“The only thing that’s crawled out of Hell around here is you, you bastard.” Arthur has switched his glare on - and put his book down, white-knuckled in his grip. (He’s going to be absolutely charming when they have to meet his brother later, two barn-cats at each other’s throats.) “And I’d be more than happy to send you back there with my foot up your overlarge French backside.”
“Of course you’d be following me down there, chéri -”
“I’d follow you down just to watch you burn first,” Arthur promises - and then pointedly picks his book back up, flipping it open and looking utterly absorbed. Connard; his reflection shows in the black window beside him, two bastard Englands deliberately ignoring the world. Splendid Is- “Go back to sleep, frog. I wanted to kill you less when you looked like you were already dead.”
How kind of him.
“I’m not tired,” says Francis - and is met with a (large) raised eyebrow, a disbelieving stare.
“After all your whining before?”
“I’m not tired anymore,” France amends - but England has seized the subject like a dog with a favourite bone, refusing to drop it. Anything to provoke.
“I’m not going to throttle you in your sleep, frog - if you’re going to die, you’re going to be wide-awake to know it’s me killing you.” There’s a smirk at the corner of Arthur’s mouth - Francis hates that smirk (France hates that smirk); it’s the look that knows too much, assumes too much. The train still bumps over the tracks, ch-chnk, ch-chnk, on its way to Scotland, the sound of France’s patience slowly wearing away. “Unless it’s bad dreams bothering you instead? What, did you dream you’d run out of shampoo?”
Never mind punching the rosbif when they reach Edinburgh - Francis is going to slam the foul-mouthed English cretin into the nearest wall and break his neck. “If you’re so bothered about my sleeping habits, Angleterre, why don’t you do something to mend them? Talk at me; Lord knows you lecture me often enough at other times and put me to sleep -”
Arthur puts his book down again - the poor thing must’ve lived a past life as a yo-yo -, sweet saccharine helpfulness. “I could punch your lights out if that would be any assistance -”
“Please, we both know which of us is considered the knockout here.” England bristles - so Francis leans forward across the table and smiles sleepy-slow, dropping his hand lightly atop the other’s and letting his thumb brush the soft skin at England’s wrist. (Arthur shivers through his fingertips.) “I like you very much when you’re feisty, lapin; you’re beautiful to kiss when you are mad. All teeth and fangs and flaming fury -”
“Masochist,” Arthur murmurs, belatedly, staring at the connection between them - but shifts when Francis wraps his fingers around his slim wrist and tugs, coming around the table with the jacket he’d spread across his lap to take the empty seat at Francis’ side. France misses the slow warmth where their legs met - but this is better, pressed thigh to thigh, and he smiles a satisfied smile and takes the novel from Arthur’s hands, pushing it back to the other side of the table again. “Oi -”
“No man,” Francis interrupts primly, taps his fingers against Arthur’s pulse, “can serve two masters.”
Arthur just eyes him, but doesn’t go for his book again. “Man cannot live by bread alone.”
“…I flirt with you and you use an analogy that makes me out to be a loaf?” Romance is dead.
England’s lips quirk again - but softer now, amused. “You are a pain.”
France resists the urge to hit his head off of the wall beside him at the awful pun - that would hurt his head again. “Very witty, cher,” he remarks instead, dry as can be at the mutilation of his beautiful language. “Have you been saving that one terribly long?”
“I wouldn’t waste the time on you,” Arthur tells him - before rather roughly shoving his jacket at a bemused Francis, awkwardly folding its edges over the Frenchman’s shoulders as their limbs knock together and elbows bang. The jacket smells like England, the woods and books and his cologne, warm from where it’s been resting over Arthur’s lap.
France only looks at his companion, waiting for an explanation as Arthur begins to go suspiciously red.
“It’s in the way, and I’m not having you ‘accidentally’ put your smelly frog feet all over it if I put it over there. So you can act as a coat rack, if nothing else.” The window, the table, the aisle, the ceiling - Arthur looks at everything but Francis as he speaks. “Even you should be able to manage to lie still for a little while, frog.”
“Very well,” Francis says, smiles a secret smile and curls into the warmth of the jacket a little more, leaning his head down to rest on Arthur’s nearest shoulder.
England jumps a mile.
France pokes him in the thigh. “I can’t lie still if my pillow jumps like a startled rabbit, Angleterre.”
“Oh, like hell am I your pillow -” Francis stubbornly doesn’t move, closing his eyes to Arthur’s protests. The darkness behind his eyes feels more comforting than it did before. “If you fall asleep and drool I’m making you buy me a new shirt, you realise.”
Still no movement.
“And you’re crushing my arm.”
Francis doesn’t move - and Arthur finally gives up, sighing and relaxing back into the seat behind him. He makes a softer pillow as a result and France’s head slips forward a little way, resting in the dip between England’s shoulder and collarbone where the space is just for him. Hears England’s heartbeat and ch-chnk, ch-chnk, the train moving ever onward, north.
“Once,” Arthur says very quietly after what feels like forever, and Francis stays still, breathing soft and slow, il y avait une fois, “there was a faerie lordling who was desperately in love with a beautiful lady of his court. He wished to wed her, to become her consort, but she had many swains who clamoured for her attention. She was a petty, shallow creature, but love blinded her beaus, and they swore they would do anything for her, prove themselves to her in any way, bring her anything she wanted if she would only choose one of them as her groom. So she sent them all away from her, challenging them all to bring her the most beautiful thing in the world, and the one who brought her the best gift first she would wed.”
Ladies - France has known many ladies over his years, ladies of now and ladies of then, old courts and their knights who swore vows of courtly love to the most beautiful, winning prizes and bringing gifts from the ends of the earth. It’s a world England knows and knew as well, lived through with wide eyes and a learning heart, knowing that so many of those oaths had ended in heartbreak, on the battlefield, young lives lost to sword and lance and fire. (Mud.) But England speaks of brighter things, an optimistic romantic under the brittle-crack exterior.
“The lordling left the court as he had been bid, determined to find the most beautiful thing, and he went to the world of men. But the towns and cities were full of dirt and iron and things that burned the faerie, so he went to the woods, to a deep forest where wanderers travelled, and he made a home there.”
Wolves live in the woods - wolves and brigands to steal and tear out the throats of those passing-through. But heroes live under the trees too, with bow and arrows -
England has a story for everything, a magpie-magician who takes broken bits and pieces of what he’s been told and crafts something shining and new from it all. Sand, sand in the hourglass and a warm fire burning in the hearth, wizards and faeries and dragons and dreams that lead minds to wandering, whimsical paths, where even his tragedies supposedly had meaning.
“People passed through the woods going from town to town - and the lordling watched them closely, listened to them, for he knew humans had made many beautiful things, did many beautiful things, and thought he could find a gift for his lady among them.
One day, a young man passed through the woods on horseback, with two of his friends. He was to be wed in the town on the other side of the forest, to a lovely girl he’d been betrothed to for a few years. He loved her dearly and spoke of their upcoming nuptials joyfully - and he glowed, the lordling saw, glowed with love and youth and hope, and it was the most beautiful thing.
So the lordling took it with his faerie magic, that love and hope and light, and the young man fell from his saddle, mute and heartless. The lordling did not see it, for he had already triumphantly borne his prize away, returning to Faerie and his lady.”
Francis stills - and he can see the starless sky above him again, the cold mud and the cold bodies around him, for Arthur has a way with words, his own magic, and he spins them quietly, gently, with his mouth to Francis’ temple (listen), tucking Francis under his chin with his cheek to blond curling hair.
“He had been beaten, though - by three others, all with what they called the most beautiful thing. One faerie had brought the lady a waterfall, stealing it from a village and freezing it into a crystal sphere. Another had brought her a slice of moonlight, locking it in a diamond necklace for the lady to wear. The third faerie had brought the lady an ever-blooming rose, that fed on blood and tears and pain - and bloomed when the three men fell into a fierce row, all contending that they had won the lady’s hand with their offering.
The lordling stood back and watched as the swains fought and came to blows - and how the lady laughed and clapped her hands watching them, amused at the sport they gave her. She did nothing when the two of the three faeries slew each other, and kissed the cheek of the only faerie to survive.
It was then the lordling announced himself.
He came forward, with his gift in hand, and bowed to the lady, ignoring the scowl his competitor gave him. And she welcomed him, one of her swains, with the same easy uncaring indulgence she’d shown the others, and asked him what he had brought her.
‘It is love, my lady,’ said the lordling, and it was. Love and hope and dreams, glowing and golden in his hands. The lady smiled, and opened her arms to receive the gift - but the lordling shook his head, and stepped back. He had seen too much, of men and of Faerie, to still be blind. ‘It is not yours,’ he said.
The lady raged then - raged and stormed and railed at how he could betray her, and she…in that instant the lordling saw her, petty and spoilt, and held the love he’d stolen all the tighter.
‘It is not yours,’ he said again, ‘for you would make something this precious and beautiful ugly,’ and he took the love with him back out of Faerie, back to the world of men. He went to the home of the man who he’d stolen from, to that mute and emotionless man - and saw the human’s betrothed, a beautiful young girl with tears in her eyes and her hands around her beloved’s hands.
‘I love you,’ she told her betrothed, again and again, and he did not respond. ‘I love you,’ she said, so the lordling released the love he had taken, giving it back to its owner, and watched the light return to the man, to his heart and eyes and to the girl’s smile when he took her hands and said ‘I love you’ back, and it was so, so much brighter than before, glowing like it had never done in the lordling’s hands.
And the lordling knew then he had found the most beautiful thing, and it was something he could only find and not capture - would not try to capture - again.”
Francis does not move for a long while after Arthur stops speaking. England’s heartbeat is steady and slow, soothing as his soft words, and he is strangely comfortable for such a boney man. France shifts, though, when he thinks of something to say -
But Arthur’s hand comes down on the back of his head, threads fingers into blond hair, and keeps Francis in place. “Go to sleep, frog,” he says, low (fond) and fed-up, and Francis smiles into his shirt, adjusting his head so he can press his lips lightly to Arthur’s neck. “And I’ll tell you the epilogue in Scotland.”
France sleeps, amused, and dreams.
(And the light shines through the ages in his head beside him, and a small muddy island child inside awakes and vocally protests at being patronised in French, determinedly sitting himself upon France’s lap all the same.)
Characters: France/England (Francis/Arthur), strongly implied relationship
Rating: T - for language and the usual threats where these two are involved, mentions of blood and death in nightmare
Summary: France wakes up suddenly from a nightmare and England soothes him back to sleep with a fantasy adventure story. Initial laughter until England realises it's serious.
A/N: For the aph_fluffathon, although it got hopelessly off-track.
~*~*~*~*~
When you have over 62 and a half million people in your heart and head, you’re bound to have a few bad dreams now and then. People, millions and millions of people for over two thousand years, living souls and lost souls and souls gone to rest, shifting and clamouring in the blood beating through their Nation’s veins -
Mud. France dreams of mud, dark and dank and brown and red, men face-down and drowning in it, speared through the back with spears and arrows, sword-slashed and gurgling. All the years meet and mingle in his mind’s eye, armoured knights dead beside bare backs covered in blue woad, camouflaged soldiers in tin-hat helmets going down with bullets through their foreheads, smashing into the surf and sand, sand, sand (choke on it), far as the eye can see, into the burning sun and the French red cross burning for a holy war, the white one too. Storms in the sky and meteors at night, straw huts burning by the shore as the cold heathens come by boat again and again to sack home and hearth and holy places until they finally settle like burrowing ants in the skin. The world feels like it’s ending with the sound of thunder - buildings falling and cannon fire and marching, marching feet. Romans and Normans and Angevins and English, Austrians and Prussians and British and Germans (friends, were they never friends) and there’s sharp wire wrapped around France’s feet and hands and neck that leaves a red ribbon line like the ones his ladies showed with diamonds (the ones that kept their heads).
The stars - even the stars change after so long, and there’s no glory or comfort in the stars or the stories when it’s like this. The diamonds fade beside America and Russia smiling and everything cracks and sears under white heat. France feels so, so small because it all slips away, his children and his place and his friends and allies, black boils to black holes that eat up his existence. He’s back in the black mud again with the black starless sky above, and everything is utterly broken and quiet. The bodies around him are faceless (France tells himself he cannot see ribbons or glasses or green eyes or silver-white hair, a green cloak wrapped around a fierce little islander he sang old French lullabies to to send the boy to sleep), cold and uncomforting because the world’s a dead place, no world at all anymore because they all loathed each other too much to share it. And the bodies keep bleeding and the mud keeps rising, and France sinks into it as it rises, over his chest and neck and mouth and nose and ey-
“Yagh.”
There’s no word quite like the sound France makes when the train he's riding on jolts suddenly over a bump in the tracks, cracking his sleep-lolled head into the window beside him. He groans afterwards though, raising a heavy hand from its resting place in his lap to rub at his now aching skull.
“Did you sleep well?”
The world is muzzy still; France blinks slumber out of his eyes to fix a bleary glare on the green-gold blur sitting opposite him at one of the train’s tables - Arthur, cher Angleterre, still fixed on the novel France had seen him pull out of his bag as soon as they’d taken their seats at London’s King’s Cross just before seven that evening. The overhead lights make it look like he has honey in his hair, blurred around the edges, soft shadows belied by the sharp tongue he keeps in his mouth.
England doesn’t bother to wait for a reply, turning another page in his book with utter disinterest. One mustn’t show one actually has a heart, of course not. Not in public. “You’ve been out of it around two hours - you still look like shit, by the way.”
Francis debates kicking him just to get a human response from his pet statue, but their legs are jostled (comfortably) too close with their bags under the table and if he tried he’d probably spill both of their belongings everywhere and have to chase fiddly things up and down the length of the carriage. (Francis will punch the rosbif when they get to Edinburgh instead.) Two hours feels like two centuries - and France’s head hurts, aching with old memories and the rap he’d given it on the windowpane. “’Ow long until we arrive?”
“We’re due in around half-past eleven -” England pauses then, apparently sensing more than seeing the look France fixes on him, sour under the artificial lights. (Arthur is never to be allowed to arrange their transport again.) Magic. He looks up - Francis sees the faint hint of purple at his collar, a loving token he’d given the other earlier that day with his teeth. “You were the one who suggested we take the last train of the day, frog.”
“Because I was intending to rest in bed this morning,” France glares back, remembering warm sheets still smelling of sex and sunlight, the beautiful morning lethargy spoilt by the empty spot in the bed beside him and a familiar stench rising up the stairs of England’s home. The carriage around them is mostly empty, thank God, save for one or two souls near the doors at the end. It’s late; sensible people took earlier trains, and the world could be only them. “Before someone decided he was going to get up and smoke out the kitchen. Mon Dieu, you’d think you could learn how to cook a basic brunch after two thousand years -”
“I - it’s my home and if I want to test out my smoke-alarm-”
“For the tenth time this month?”
“It’s absolutely none of your business.” Arthur always goes such a delightful shade of pink.
France just snorts, lifting a strand of blond hair out of his eyes. “It becomes the business of the world when you try to shove the abominable attempts you call ‘cooking’ down our throats, Angleterre. How it is you manage to continually find replacement ovens that connect directly to Hell is beyond me; because the…the things that come out of those appliances have to have come directly from the Devil himself -”
“The only thing that’s crawled out of Hell around here is you, you bastard.” Arthur has switched his glare on - and put his book down, white-knuckled in his grip. (He’s going to be absolutely charming when they have to meet his brother later, two barn-cats at each other’s throats.) “And I’d be more than happy to send you back there with my foot up your overlarge French backside.”
“Of course you’d be following me down there, chéri -”
“I’d follow you down just to watch you burn first,” Arthur promises - and then pointedly picks his book back up, flipping it open and looking utterly absorbed. Connard; his reflection shows in the black window beside him, two bastard Englands deliberately ignoring the world. Splendid Is- “Go back to sleep, frog. I wanted to kill you less when you looked like you were already dead.”
How kind of him.
“I’m not tired,” says Francis - and is met with a (large) raised eyebrow, a disbelieving stare.
“After all your whining before?”
“I’m not tired anymore,” France amends - but England has seized the subject like a dog with a favourite bone, refusing to drop it. Anything to provoke.
“I’m not going to throttle you in your sleep, frog - if you’re going to die, you’re going to be wide-awake to know it’s me killing you.” There’s a smirk at the corner of Arthur’s mouth - Francis hates that smirk (France hates that smirk); it’s the look that knows too much, assumes too much. The train still bumps over the tracks, ch-chnk, ch-chnk, on its way to Scotland, the sound of France’s patience slowly wearing away. “Unless it’s bad dreams bothering you instead? What, did you dream you’d run out of shampoo?”
Never mind punching the rosbif when they reach Edinburgh - Francis is going to slam the foul-mouthed English cretin into the nearest wall and break his neck. “If you’re so bothered about my sleeping habits, Angleterre, why don’t you do something to mend them? Talk at me; Lord knows you lecture me often enough at other times and put me to sleep -”
Arthur puts his book down again - the poor thing must’ve lived a past life as a yo-yo -, sweet saccharine helpfulness. “I could punch your lights out if that would be any assistance -”
“Please, we both know which of us is considered the knockout here.” England bristles - so Francis leans forward across the table and smiles sleepy-slow, dropping his hand lightly atop the other’s and letting his thumb brush the soft skin at England’s wrist. (Arthur shivers through his fingertips.) “I like you very much when you’re feisty, lapin; you’re beautiful to kiss when you are mad. All teeth and fangs and flaming fury -”
“Masochist,” Arthur murmurs, belatedly, staring at the connection between them - but shifts when Francis wraps his fingers around his slim wrist and tugs, coming around the table with the jacket he’d spread across his lap to take the empty seat at Francis’ side. France misses the slow warmth where their legs met - but this is better, pressed thigh to thigh, and he smiles a satisfied smile and takes the novel from Arthur’s hands, pushing it back to the other side of the table again. “Oi -”
“No man,” Francis interrupts primly, taps his fingers against Arthur’s pulse, “can serve two masters.”
Arthur just eyes him, but doesn’t go for his book again. “Man cannot live by bread alone.”
“…I flirt with you and you use an analogy that makes me out to be a loaf?” Romance is dead.
England’s lips quirk again - but softer now, amused. “You are a pain.”
France resists the urge to hit his head off of the wall beside him at the awful pun - that would hurt his head again. “Very witty, cher,” he remarks instead, dry as can be at the mutilation of his beautiful language. “Have you been saving that one terribly long?”
“I wouldn’t waste the time on you,” Arthur tells him - before rather roughly shoving his jacket at a bemused Francis, awkwardly folding its edges over the Frenchman’s shoulders as their limbs knock together and elbows bang. The jacket smells like England, the woods and books and his cologne, warm from where it’s been resting over Arthur’s lap.
France only looks at his companion, waiting for an explanation as Arthur begins to go suspiciously red.
“It’s in the way, and I’m not having you ‘accidentally’ put your smelly frog feet all over it if I put it over there. So you can act as a coat rack, if nothing else.” The window, the table, the aisle, the ceiling - Arthur looks at everything but Francis as he speaks. “Even you should be able to manage to lie still for a little while, frog.”
“Very well,” Francis says, smiles a secret smile and curls into the warmth of the jacket a little more, leaning his head down to rest on Arthur’s nearest shoulder.
England jumps a mile.
France pokes him in the thigh. “I can’t lie still if my pillow jumps like a startled rabbit, Angleterre.”
“Oh, like hell am I your pillow -” Francis stubbornly doesn’t move, closing his eyes to Arthur’s protests. The darkness behind his eyes feels more comforting than it did before. “If you fall asleep and drool I’m making you buy me a new shirt, you realise.”
Still no movement.
“And you’re crushing my arm.”
Francis doesn’t move - and Arthur finally gives up, sighing and relaxing back into the seat behind him. He makes a softer pillow as a result and France’s head slips forward a little way, resting in the dip between England’s shoulder and collarbone where the space is just for him. Hears England’s heartbeat and ch-chnk, ch-chnk, the train moving ever onward, north.
“Once,” Arthur says very quietly after what feels like forever, and Francis stays still, breathing soft and slow, il y avait une fois, “there was a faerie lordling who was desperately in love with a beautiful lady of his court. He wished to wed her, to become her consort, but she had many swains who clamoured for her attention. She was a petty, shallow creature, but love blinded her beaus, and they swore they would do anything for her, prove themselves to her in any way, bring her anything she wanted if she would only choose one of them as her groom. So she sent them all away from her, challenging them all to bring her the most beautiful thing in the world, and the one who brought her the best gift first she would wed.”
Ladies - France has known many ladies over his years, ladies of now and ladies of then, old courts and their knights who swore vows of courtly love to the most beautiful, winning prizes and bringing gifts from the ends of the earth. It’s a world England knows and knew as well, lived through with wide eyes and a learning heart, knowing that so many of those oaths had ended in heartbreak, on the battlefield, young lives lost to sword and lance and fire. (Mud.) But England speaks of brighter things, an optimistic romantic under the brittle-crack exterior.
“The lordling left the court as he had been bid, determined to find the most beautiful thing, and he went to the world of men. But the towns and cities were full of dirt and iron and things that burned the faerie, so he went to the woods, to a deep forest where wanderers travelled, and he made a home there.”
Wolves live in the woods - wolves and brigands to steal and tear out the throats of those passing-through. But heroes live under the trees too, with bow and arrows -
England has a story for everything, a magpie-magician who takes broken bits and pieces of what he’s been told and crafts something shining and new from it all. Sand, sand in the hourglass and a warm fire burning in the hearth, wizards and faeries and dragons and dreams that lead minds to wandering, whimsical paths, where even his tragedies supposedly had meaning.
“People passed through the woods going from town to town - and the lordling watched them closely, listened to them, for he knew humans had made many beautiful things, did many beautiful things, and thought he could find a gift for his lady among them.
One day, a young man passed through the woods on horseback, with two of his friends. He was to be wed in the town on the other side of the forest, to a lovely girl he’d been betrothed to for a few years. He loved her dearly and spoke of their upcoming nuptials joyfully - and he glowed, the lordling saw, glowed with love and youth and hope, and it was the most beautiful thing.
So the lordling took it with his faerie magic, that love and hope and light, and the young man fell from his saddle, mute and heartless. The lordling did not see it, for he had already triumphantly borne his prize away, returning to Faerie and his lady.”
Francis stills - and he can see the starless sky above him again, the cold mud and the cold bodies around him, for Arthur has a way with words, his own magic, and he spins them quietly, gently, with his mouth to Francis’ temple (listen), tucking Francis under his chin with his cheek to blond curling hair.
“He had been beaten, though - by three others, all with what they called the most beautiful thing. One faerie had brought the lady a waterfall, stealing it from a village and freezing it into a crystal sphere. Another had brought her a slice of moonlight, locking it in a diamond necklace for the lady to wear. The third faerie had brought the lady an ever-blooming rose, that fed on blood and tears and pain - and bloomed when the three men fell into a fierce row, all contending that they had won the lady’s hand with their offering.
The lordling stood back and watched as the swains fought and came to blows - and how the lady laughed and clapped her hands watching them, amused at the sport they gave her. She did nothing when the two of the three faeries slew each other, and kissed the cheek of the only faerie to survive.
It was then the lordling announced himself.
He came forward, with his gift in hand, and bowed to the lady, ignoring the scowl his competitor gave him. And she welcomed him, one of her swains, with the same easy uncaring indulgence she’d shown the others, and asked him what he had brought her.
‘It is love, my lady,’ said the lordling, and it was. Love and hope and dreams, glowing and golden in his hands. The lady smiled, and opened her arms to receive the gift - but the lordling shook his head, and stepped back. He had seen too much, of men and of Faerie, to still be blind. ‘It is not yours,’ he said.
The lady raged then - raged and stormed and railed at how he could betray her, and she…in that instant the lordling saw her, petty and spoilt, and held the love he’d stolen all the tighter.
‘It is not yours,’ he said again, ‘for you would make something this precious and beautiful ugly,’ and he took the love with him back out of Faerie, back to the world of men. He went to the home of the man who he’d stolen from, to that mute and emotionless man - and saw the human’s betrothed, a beautiful young girl with tears in her eyes and her hands around her beloved’s hands.
‘I love you,’ she told her betrothed, again and again, and he did not respond. ‘I love you,’ she said, so the lordling released the love he had taken, giving it back to its owner, and watched the light return to the man, to his heart and eyes and to the girl’s smile when he took her hands and said ‘I love you’ back, and it was so, so much brighter than before, glowing like it had never done in the lordling’s hands.
And the lordling knew then he had found the most beautiful thing, and it was something he could only find and not capture - would not try to capture - again.”
Francis does not move for a long while after Arthur stops speaking. England’s heartbeat is steady and slow, soothing as his soft words, and he is strangely comfortable for such a boney man. France shifts, though, when he thinks of something to say -
But Arthur’s hand comes down on the back of his head, threads fingers into blond hair, and keeps Francis in place. “Go to sleep, frog,” he says, low (fond) and fed-up, and Francis smiles into his shirt, adjusting his head so he can press his lips lightly to Arthur’s neck. “And I’ll tell you the epilogue in Scotland.”
France sleeps, amused, and dreams.
(And the light shines through the ages in his head beside him, and a small muddy island child inside awakes and vocally protests at being patronised in French, determinedly sitting himself upon France’s lap all the same.)