APH: Home on the Range
Title: Home on the Range
Author: grosse_averse
Characters: America, Canada
Rated: PG-13, I guess, for mentions of WWI/trench warfare
Summary: For prompt #23, "range".
range, n. - a large area of open land for grazing or hunting; an open or enclosed area with targets for shooting practice.
Home, home on the range...
Matthew remembers visiting Alfred, just as he’s sure Alfred remembers visiting Matthew. He remembers Alfred’s wide plains, miles and miles of gold, far as the eye can see. He remembers spending afternoons on horses, traversing the area beyond Alfred’s hunting lodge, peering out across the horizon and seeing where the gold ground meets the horizon.
Where the deer and the antelope play...
“Mattie,” Alfred says one day, tilting his head up so the sunlight catches the skin of his throat and illuminates it. When Matthew looks at him he can’t tell where the sky stops and Alfred’s eyes begin. “You ever think you could just run away and be your own?”
Matthew pauses, looks up at his brother, his golden older brother who said he was going to be free and did so.
“Be my own?” he repeats.
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word...
“Yeah.” Alfred grins up at the wide, blue forever. “Like, sometimes I get this yearning, y’know? I’ve always wanted to be a rancher. Just forget that I’m America and just be Alfred.”
Matthew frowns at him, gauging his seriousness, and Alfred looks down to laugh. “Aw, brighten up, little bro!” he crows. “I wouldn’t really. It’s just...a thing, you know?”
Matthew doesn’t know, but he nods anyways. “Yeah, Alfred, I know.”
And the skies are not cloudy all day...
“Alfred, just shut up.” Matthew snaps, now, in 1918, pulled out of his golden-edged memories into the present, cold and shivering and huddling in the trenches as his brother runs a thumb down the barrel of his gun and begins humming again.
Alfred grins at him. “Brighten up, little bro!” he repeats the words from so long ago and they sound wrong in this environment so Matthew shudders in disgust. “Singing helps me concentrate on my range.”
“Your range?” Matthew repeats, but he figures it out once Alfred scrambles to the top of the pit, aims, and blows a German’s head off. He scuttles back down, a crab, and Matthew almost wants to cry.
The sky is not the same colour as Alfred’s eyes, anymore (it is grey and bleak and hopeless), and when Alfred grins at him again it is a wrong sort of grin, it’s the sort of grin a soldier gets when he’s seen too much (but how could Alfred see too much, he hasn’t been here for all of it, he doesn’t know what Matthew has seen - !)
“Don’t worry.” Alfred says soothingly. “I’ll get us out of this. Big Bro will fix it.”
Is it only because Arthur couldn't fix anything for you? Matthew thinks but doesn’t ask, and when Alfred turns away and begins singing that same damn song again Matthew feels like he wants to stopper up his ears with mud.
Home, home on the range...
Note: America didn't join the war until 1917.
Author: grosse_averse
Characters: America, Canada
Rated: PG-13, I guess, for mentions of WWI/trench warfare
Summary: For prompt #23, "range".
range, n. - a large area of open land for grazing or hunting; an open or enclosed area with targets for shooting practice.
Home, home on the range...
Matthew remembers visiting Alfred, just as he’s sure Alfred remembers visiting Matthew. He remembers Alfred’s wide plains, miles and miles of gold, far as the eye can see. He remembers spending afternoons on horses, traversing the area beyond Alfred’s hunting lodge, peering out across the horizon and seeing where the gold ground meets the horizon.
Where the deer and the antelope play...
“Mattie,” Alfred says one day, tilting his head up so the sunlight catches the skin of his throat and illuminates it. When Matthew looks at him he can’t tell where the sky stops and Alfred’s eyes begin. “You ever think you could just run away and be your own?”
Matthew pauses, looks up at his brother, his golden older brother who said he was going to be free and did so.
“Be my own?” he repeats.
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word...
“Yeah.” Alfred grins up at the wide, blue forever. “Like, sometimes I get this yearning, y’know? I’ve always wanted to be a rancher. Just forget that I’m America and just be Alfred.”
Matthew frowns at him, gauging his seriousness, and Alfred looks down to laugh. “Aw, brighten up, little bro!” he crows. “I wouldn’t really. It’s just...a thing, you know?”
Matthew doesn’t know, but he nods anyways. “Yeah, Alfred, I know.”
And the skies are not cloudy all day...
“Alfred, just shut up.” Matthew snaps, now, in 1918, pulled out of his golden-edged memories into the present, cold and shivering and huddling in the trenches as his brother runs a thumb down the barrel of his gun and begins humming again.
Alfred grins at him. “Brighten up, little bro!” he repeats the words from so long ago and they sound wrong in this environment so Matthew shudders in disgust. “Singing helps me concentrate on my range.”
“Your range?” Matthew repeats, but he figures it out once Alfred scrambles to the top of the pit, aims, and blows a German’s head off. He scuttles back down, a crab, and Matthew almost wants to cry.
The sky is not the same colour as Alfred’s eyes, anymore (it is grey and bleak and hopeless), and when Alfred grins at him again it is a wrong sort of grin, it’s the sort of grin a soldier gets when he’s seen too much (but how could Alfred see too much, he hasn’t been here for all of it, he doesn’t know what Matthew has seen - !)
“Don’t worry.” Alfred says soothingly. “I’ll get us out of this. Big Bro will fix it.”
Is it only because Arthur couldn't fix anything for you? Matthew thinks but doesn’t ask, and when Alfred turns away and begins singing that same damn song again Matthew feels like he wants to stopper up his ears with mud.
Home, home on the range...
Note: America didn't join the war until 1917.