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oumaheroes · 4 months

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My soul cries out for Scotland and England being siblings; I love those two and their stormy sense of brotherhood. I may or may not be biased cos my favourite period is medieval, which is ripe for England and Scotland conflict and shenanigans.

Congratulations on 1000 followers! You deserve it!

Thank you so much, Ballad!! And to you too Nonny, that's a high compliment indeed <3

I got a few requests for UK bros and England and Scotland as a pair, so there will be more than just this. I hope this quick little story fits the bill in the meantime!

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Currency

Alba nodded in satisfaction as he tilted the horse's face slightly to the side, its rubbery lips soft and warm against his bare palm.

'Teeth seem fine.'

'Let me see.'

Alba bent to hold Albion up to the animal, settling his weight against his hip.

'Careful.' He warned as his brother reached out for the horse's nose, 'Slowly. Or she'll bite.'

'I know.' Albion said sharply, but paused his hands in mid air before lowering them carefully down on the short fur, 'I'm not stupid.'

'Sure.'

'So what do you think.' The horse's owner, a traveller from Gaul unusual this far up north, peered at them with lowered brows. His accent was thick, more used to the Brythonic dialects of the south than the midland ones now quick on Alba's tongue. 'You take her? She's strong; good for distance.'

'She seems healthy.' Alba agreed, 'Perfect for the winter.'

'That what you need her for?'

Alba didn't reply.

The stranger raised his hands, conceding, 'Well, she is yours if you want. She can't have more foal so she no good to me, and no war mount either.' He patted his other horse on its thick neck, the creature a good few hands taller than the smaller female they were discussing. They were tied together with a long rope, the smaller horse further tethered to a loaded wooden wagon.

Alba ignored this comment too. 'What do you want for her?' He asked, switching to what he hoped was the man's native tongue, a language from Northern Gaul he had picked up from some sailors a few years ago. It was useful to know the closest ones from the mainland and he was rewarded for his rusty troubles with a wry smile.

‘125 denarii’, The Gaul said smoothly, ‘Or equivalent, if you have other currency.’

'Coins?' Alba shifted Albion's weight, his brother slipping from his grip in his attempt to lean closer to the horse, too interested in stroking her to pay any attention to the conversation. 'What about in trade?'

'I trade in coin for horses.'

'We don't use coin here.' (1)

'Then you don't trade with me.'

Alba silently cursed. They did not need a horse, not in the way they needed food or shelter, but it would certainly be useful. Winter was tightening its grip on the land and a horse would make tracking across snow and icy terrain between clans much easier. Alba and Ériu could cross the distances fine enough, but their brothers were too young to make as many long treks without either numerous breaks in between or long stops in settlements. Summer, with its days of generous light and warm weather, made the amount of travelling Alba wanted to do easier, but as soon as the days grew short it became more and more difficult to move safely at any decent speed. Mama always had them more settled at this time of year, but even Albion could feel a new restlessness in the air that hadn't been there in her time.

A mare would help.

Alba placed Albion down and felt discreetly for the pouch of assorted coins against his leg. 'Why do you want coin?'

The Gaul shrugged, 'Much of the mainland uses coin. It's common.'

'Not here.'

'Here is not the main land.'

'Why for horses?'

The man spread an arm in an arc over his wagon, the thick waterproof cover high over whatever was piled underneath, 'Everything else, I'll trade for in these parts. But horses are worth their weight in gold, here as much as anywhere else. The value is not tradeable.'

Albion tugged at Alba's trousers, 'Let me back up.'

'We have quality things to trade.' Sticking to the stranger's language, Alba kept the Gaul's gaze. Albion tugged at him again and Alba gripped the shoulder of his cloak to hold him still, fingers digging down firm. 'Cloth, dyed. Jewellery, skins, meat-'

'I only trade horses in coin.'

The man spoke politely enough but Alba could hear the note of finality in his words.

'Adair-'

'Shh!' Alba pushed Albion away towards the horse, noting that she was still patient and calm despite the child by her feet. 'Go away.'

From his inner pocket, he lifted out the pouch which held their meagre collection of coins. They were all different: various sizes and colours, with different pictures on their sides. They found them along their travels by the sides of worn and well walked roads, usually in the south around port settlements and trade points. Albion and Ériu had a keen eye for them in the mud and grass and they had amassed a fair few.Alba selected the biggest one and held it out.

The man blinked at him.

'For the horse.' Alba said.

The man laughed loudly. Alba felt his cheeks flush and brought his hand back down, feeling wrong-footed. 'What?'

'You are serious?' The man shook his head and grinned, 'One coin?'

Alba frowned. 'You said you wanted coin. One horse, one coin.'

'By the Gods.' The man ran a hand through his hair and laughed again, 'If I didn't know you were serious, boy, I'd beat you for the cheek of it. One horse, one coin; my my.'

He huffed in amusement and gestured for the pouch, 'Show me those.'

He took the collection and tipped the contents into Alba's palm, moving the coins around with a thick index finger. 'You see the different faces and sizes? They all have different worth.'

Alba stared at them.

'They're not like pots, or furs, where the value is unique to what you’re trading.' The man continued, flipping over one of the coins, 'If one if shiny or newer, it doesn't change value. So long as it is the same weight. And the different sized coins represent different value, as well as what they’re made of.'

‘But some are gold.’

The man patted Alba hard on the shoulder, 'You need to learn money, boy, if you want to do proper trade.'

Alba forced his face to stay expressionless, 'Is it enough. For the mare.'

'No.'

Alba scoffed and tipped the money back into the pouch. 'Then this has been a waste of both our time.'

The Gaul sucked at his top lip behind his moustache and jerked his head over Alba's shoulder, 'They all yours?'

Ériu and Cymru were further away behind them on the muddy track, kicking a small rock back and forth between them. Ériu caught the rock between Crymu's feet and kicked it free with a shout of victory, dashing away to gain a clear advantage.

'Yes.' Alba said, watching them.

‘Parents? Clan?’

‘No.’

The man nodded. 'That's a lot of you. You’re all young to be alone as you are.'

Alba didn't reply.

‘Tell you what.’ Before Alba could react, too quick even to register exactly what happened, the man hunkered down and gripped a hand around Albion’s upper arm. He tugged him closer, hard enough so that Albion tripped over his feet, ‘I’ll take this one as payment. We’ll do it your way and make it a trade.’

He cupped a hand around Albion’s head to stare into his eyes, critical and cool as if assessing an animal, ‘He seems strong enough to grow into something worthwhile.’

‘Get off him!’ Alba’s voice cracked, surprise rendering him younger, and stepped forwards, one hand going to the dagger by his side.

The man put up a hand, eyes still on Albion, ‘Calm down. I’m only looking.’

‘He’s not for sale.’

‘You want to trade rather than pay? This is at least a fair exchange.’

Albion, the shock of being tugged about by a stranger finally having worn off, twisted sharply and bit down hard on the man’s wrist. The Gaul reacted in kind and stood with a yelp, sending Albion flying back with a wet thud into the muddy ground.

‘Vermin!’ He kicked out at Albion where he lay sprawled, catching him in the stomach.

Over Albion’s cry of pain, Alba heard Ériu shout something from behind him, then the sound of running.

The man returned his attention to Alba and cradled his wrist, his eyes flashing, ‘It was a true offer, made in kind faith. He would have had a better life with me and you’d know it, if you weren’t so damn foolish. Food, shelter; not this.’ He gestured to Alba’s worn clothes, travel stained and haphazardly repaired.

‘We don’t want the kindness, sir.’

‘Then by your own death be it.’ The Gaul shook out his hand and swung himself up onto his horse. Clicking his tongue, he kicked at its flank and moved them off without a look back.

Alba lunged forwards and quickly dragged Albion out of the way of the wheels before they could clip him, hoisting him into his arms.

‘You’re alright.’ He told him, more to make it true than anything else, ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘What happened?’ Ériu came panting beside him, looking from Alba to Albion and then at the retreating caravan, ‘Did he-‘

‘Leave it.’

Ériu reached for his dagger as Cymru came breathless and horrified by his side, ‘Who does he thi-‘

‘Leave it.’ Alba, grabbed his arm. ‘It’s not worth it.’

He felt Albion press his face into his shoulder, arms tight about his neck, and swallowed back something hot and bitter, ‘He’s not one of ours.’

Ériu’s expression soured into disgust, ‘I don’t think that should change anything.’

‘Doesn’t matter what you think.’ Alba turned away so that Ériu couldn’t see the shame and anger on his face, ‘It fucking does.’

--------------------

‘Adair.’

Alba opened his eyes and stared at the dark ceiling of their makeshift shelter. The campfire Ériu was guarding outside made the shadows jump, the outlines of the branches supporting the skins above their heads jumping and lengthening into nothingness.

‘Ad-‘

‘What, Arthur.’ Alba turned his head to find Albion, wide-eyed and watchful between him and Cymru.

‘What that man said earlier-‘

Alba turned away. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘Is that how people see us now?’

Albion’s voice was quiet, smaller beyond trying not to wake Cymru fast asleep on his back. Alba rolled back to face him, ‘See us like what.’

Albion shrugged, a small movement under heavy furs, ‘Alone.’

More than simply alone, Alba knew he meant. ‘Alone’ as something bad, something less than. Something to be pitied. He cracked the knuckles of one hand with his thumb under the covers as he thought of what to say, ‘We are alone.’

‘Mama was alone.’ Albion said quietly, ‘She used to say so, before we were here. But-’

‘Mama was grown.’

‘She wasn’t always.’

‘Before then, there were more. Mama was the last one of her family before we came along.’

‘It wasn’t a bad thing then, though. For her to be alone.’

‘Were you born?’ Alba raised an eyebrow even though Albion likely couldn’t see it, ‘How do you know.’

Albion stayed silent. Alba thought of his belly, the purple bruises they had found bloomed into his pale skin from the boot that caught him earlier, and reached for his brother to gently pull him closer, ‘We are alone. That’s our fate now. Believing it to be good or bad won’t change it. It just is.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Nothing wrong with being alone, anyway.’ Alba tucked Albion’s head under his chin, his hair cool from the chilly air, and closed his eyes, ‘We’re alright on our own.’

‘We need to get better at it.’

‘I’ll take your advice when you can stay awake through a watch.’

‘...That was one time.’

‘The only time we let you try.’

Albion huffed and shifted closer. ‘I don’t want to go on watch anyway.’

‘Then I don’t want your advice.’

Albion fell silent, and Alba listened through Cymru’s snores as his breathing slowed and deepened. Every experience had something to learn, Mama had always said, and the day’s teaching was a valuable one, as hard as it was to take. The world beyond their lands was unknown, and something they’d need to learn to read and understand if they wanted to work with it successfully.

The next day, Alba spread the illegible coins of foreign kings onto the ground and began to learn.

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AN:

(1) Celts and trade. Celtic peoples used a bartering system of trading goods, rather than using money. Coins were used to store or show wealth but were also just as often used in jewellery. Celtic nations on the European mainland did eventually start minting their own currencies, followed by the British Celts much later, but it was a system quite late to take compared to their contemporaries

You can read more about it here, though as always please do your own research!

#aph england #hws england #hws scotland #aph scotland #hws #hetalia #historical hetalia #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #hws british isles #aph #heroes writes #longbow anon

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hetalia-content-creators · 3 years

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NAME: @oumaheroes ROLES: Fanfiction, headcanons, drabbles, reblogs BLOG TYPE: Hetalia blog

#heroes headcanons #fanfiction #headcanon #drabbles #reblog #fruk #aph england #aph france #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #oumaheroes

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kochei0 · 4 years

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Man, I haven't even thought about Hetalia in YEARS, but I got such a fuzzy and happy feeling seeing your Brit Bros again. I swear, your old Brit Bro blog was my single favourite piece of Hetalia content back in the days when it was my full blown hyperfixation, and even though I've lost interest in the series I still think back on your content so fondly. Your characters were just so GOOD and I still kind of love them!

hhh thank you so much! tbh i have a similar feeling, with lots of nostalgia.i mean, a lot of my memories with aph (+ its very nature) are very y i k e s, on a lot of levelbut. i poured so much of my heart into the blogs, i got so attached to these characters. both the ones i ‘created’ and the ones i used. i still love them. and i’m so incredibly glad some people still remember my content fondly. it means a lot to me :)

#kochei blabbers #man when i realize i had 2 blogs i regularly updated #i was such a productive nerd #Anonymous

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oumaheroes · 8 months

Text

Do Not Go Gentle

Ériu

Albion

Alba

Warnings for death

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Cymru first dies crowded.

He is no stranger to death. It is all around him, every day- something as unavoidable and normal as children being born, or the weather changing in the sky. Lambs die. Birds die. Plants die- the earth turns over and around and things fall forever into the night, whether you understand why or not.

Their humans talk about death like an ending, an inevitable event that comes for them as though life is a rope forever pulling them forwards to a final stop, and Cymru watches from his safe distance as the years pass by hardly touching him. Although one day there will be an end for him, it is so long into the future, longer than any mortal lifespan, that it does not register with the same impact as it must do for them.

But Mama says that their people are right, and that he should listen more carefully.

‘Here.’ She calls him over to her one day, crouched low by a pond, hands cupped and close to her chest. She opens them as he approaches to reveal a small bird within. He cannot tell what kind it is- colours mutes and shape disguised by what he notices first and foremost.

It does not move.

‘Oh,’ He says, saddened. ‘Is it..?’

Mama gestures for him to hold out his hands. He does so, reluctantly, and she gently places the body within. The bird is young, almost old enough to leave the nest but not yet- downy feathers cover the few full, strong adult ones and circle around its neck like a torc. Its eyes are closed and bulging, its bones too loose when he shifts his hands underneath it.

Cymru wants to let go, but doesn’t. Knows he shouldn’t.

‘It was where it shouldn’t have been,’ Mama says. She picks up the bird between forefinger and thumb and turns it over by the head in Cymru’s hands, quick and rough, as if the bird is nothing more to her than a seed or a stone. The movement of it, the dead weight and wide angles, is wrong. She taps the downy feathers which are more numerous on the other side, ‘See here? These feathers are waterlogged. They collected the water and pulled it under, so that it couldn’t swim back up.’

Cymru feels sick. The bird feels dirty, unnatural in the way it lay in his palms, and he longs to throw it away and wipe his hands clean. But Mama is there, watching, and Cymru knows that his brothers would be as unaffected by it as she is.

‘Even if it could have swum to safety, it might have instead died in the fall. Or been caught by a larger bird, or animal. Might have died from sickness before it fell, or abandoned and starved by its parents.’ Mama’s voice is soft but she holds one hand under Cymru’s two, forcing him to look at what he holds. The bird’s head is too big, its beak too wide and closed eyes too round. He swallows back the whine in his throat, and the jerk of revulsion he wants to let out.

‘To live is to be lucky.’ Mama lifts up one of the small wings by the tip, almost adult feathers fanning like fingers, ‘There is no boundary we can cross to pass into safety, and no time limit to survive in order to avoid it. Death can happen at any time, for anything, and everything that lives today is luckier than it knows. One chance amongst thousands.’

Just as Cymru can handle holding the bird no longer, Mama takes it from him and lays it back in the shallows of the pond. It sits there, half submerged and glistening as Mama takes his hands and washes them, before drying them on her tunic.

‘Do not think, as all young things do, that your chances will never run out.’ She meets his eye, catching him by the chin and regarding him seriously, ‘It is just as easy for us to lose the piece of luck we have as the people we watch over. The only difference between us and them, is that we have a few guaranteed half chances to remind ourselves of how precious life is.’

There are fine lines around her eyes, strands of silver in her flame red hair, but her grip is tight, muscles of her arms strong. Cymru nods, and she softens.

-----------------

‘There are so many people.’

On Alba’s shoulders, Cymru grips the wooden posts to keep them both steady. ‘I didn’t know there could even be so many.’

‘There will be more than this in a few days.’ Mama says.

On her knees, she finishes wrapping Albion to her back and glances up at Cymru and Alba where they stand atop the woodstore, peering over the mound’s defences. In the early morning light, shapes and activity emerge from the retreating shadows like a slow retreating tide. Down the hill, all around the base of the settlement, people are erecting temporary shelters and pitching their animals. Winter solstice is here, with its darkest and coldest of nights, but this year it is apparently a particularly special one.

Cymru doesn’t really understand why. Something about the stars, or the years. Or where the sun hits the ancient stones nearby as it rises and falls- a tradition older than even Mama, passed down from the people before her who stood the circles of stones so tall all over their islands. All Cymru knows is that it is busy, with more people than he has ever seen before going to and fro and glancing his way whenever he goes near them. When Cymru and his family had arrived to stay for the winter a few months ago, this mound had been nothing more than home to one clan. Now, the mound and the lands around it was home to people from at least seven.

Cymru’s eyes pass over all of them, stretched out to the lake on the horizon, his breath clouding in front of him like smoke.

Mama stands with a grunt, testing the weight and position of the wraps keeping Albion -still sleeping- securely in place, and clicks at them with her tongue to come down. ‘There is to be another King and his people arriving today.’ She licks her thumb and rubs a dark smudge of something off Alba’s cheek, ‘I have to meet him properly.’

This means that she will be gone for hours down in the new camp, learning and sharing whatever news this new group of people have to bring. Her children will need to stay away and represent their family on their own. Alba straightens, turning to seriously observe the longhouses and storage buildings as if searching for fault.

‘Ah, a keen guardsman I see before me.’ Mama strokes back Alba’s hair fondly, ‘Today, you can be off duty.’

Alba reddens and scowls, hunching his shoulders, ‘I didn’t do anything.’

Mama laughs through her nose, ‘Good, because we don’t need guards people up here. But we do need ambassadors down there.’ She takes Alba by the shoulders and steers him through the village to the open wooden gates leading to the descent. Their people move aside for them as they pass, Cymru trailing just behind her watching Albion’s fair head against her back.

They stop at the gate- thrown open wide- and move off to the side to let a hunter and his pelts go by: foxes, badgers, and deer.

‘You see those trees and lake?’ A sharp and dramatic turn of Alba to the right, Mama’s hands still about his shoulders.

He laughs, staggering on his feet, ‘Yes.’

‘Oh? What about that field?’ A sharp, wide twist to the left.

He laughs again, stumbling to right himself, ‘I see it.’

‘Good. Well, there are a lot of different children milling about now and they don’t all speak the same tongue. I need some very important people to mix them together and act as a bridge between everyone, in that such field or those such trees. Maybe a game that everyone can play; make them feel comfortable and united.’

‘You want us to play?’ Alba sounds offended, laughter vanishing immediately.

Mama inclines her head, ‘I want you to negotiate amity.’

Alba looks to the swarms of shelters and people, then back up at Mama, ‘…What?’

‘It’s important that everyone here feels part of the same thing.’ Mama says. She drums her fingers like spider legs, fluttering them onto the scarf around Alba’s neck, ‘That’s hard to do when you don’t speak the same language and you’re in a strange place. Not everyone travels like we do. For most, this will be their first time outside of everything that they know.’

Alba doesn’t say anything. He looks back down at the sprawling camp, his face away from Mama so only Cymru can see that he’s dissatisfied. Cymru feels guilty for some reason, although he doesn’t know why. There is something he is missing that Alba understands, and he wishes he were older to figure it out.

‘It is an important job,’ Mama tells them, ‘It is what we need to do. It is what I am doing with the Kings and Queens and priests; their sons and daughters are just as important. I cannot do all at once, but all should be done.’

Alba doesn’t reply. Mama eyes the crown of his head, then winks at Cymru. She lifts her hands from Alba’s shoulders to shift Albion higher, ‘Never mind. There are a lot of them, thinking about it properly. Too many, I think; maybe it’s best I do it.’

‘I can do it.’ Alba says instantly, ‘There aren’t that many.’

Mama pulls a face, conflicted, ‘I’m not sure, it will be difficult. I was wrong to ask you, it will take patience and good communica-‘

‘We can do that.’ Alba grabs Cymru’s hand and Cymru feels panicked. ‘I can take some and Cymru can take some others. We’ll find Ériu and get him to help too. We’ll do a different language each and get together that way.’

Mama tilts her head from side to side. ‘Perhaps that will work.’

‘It will.’

‘And what will you do if they don’t want to play the same thing?’

‘We can play different things between us.’

Cymru looks up at Mama, helplessly. He does not share Alba’s confidence; there are indeed so many people, so many children. How would he talk to them? What would he say?

‘And what if there are arguments?’

Alba frowns, considering his answer, ‘I’ll listen and try to fix it.’

‘How about if some children do not wish to play?’

Alba doesn’t know the answer to that one.

‘They don’t have to.’ Cymru suggests, ‘They can watch, if they want. Or join in later. I could look after those ones.’

He does not know what games or activities Alba is thinking of offering, but none that Cymru can imagine will be things he is good at. He cannot run very fast, nor throw as far as his brothers can. He cannot climb to the tallest branches, or hunt on his own. The idea of embarrassing his family, of damaging the way they are seen by their people, is more than he can bear.

Cymru worries that Mama will see through his selfish suggestion but she smiles at them both. ‘Wonderful ideas,’ she says. She bends to brush down Cymru’s front and slides her fingers under his scarf to the fat, gold torc at his neck, ‘What clever ambassadors I have.’

-----------------

It works out better than Cymru expected.

Alba does the talking, as Cymru thought that he would. He moves amongst the groups, collecting children as he goes and directing them all to the field away from the campsites as Cymru follows at his side. Most they ask choose to join in, eager to be away from the tedium of moving and the tense atmosphere of being somewhere unfamiliar. Some have been walking all night but still want to come.

It is awkward, at first. Cymru does not know what to do with himself, does not know how to begin when people know who he is but don’t know him at all. But then he speaks to one girl on his own, hands shaking, then another. Then a boy, taller than he is, who grins down at him and follows where Cymru points him without question. Alba finds an empty pig’s bladder and blows it up, and before too long there is shrieking and running and Cymru forgets himself amongst it all.

Ériu runs over to join them with some older children not long later, fresh from hunting and eager to take part.

‘What else?’

A good while later, the poor pig’s bladder lays between their feet, finally deflated after numerous games kicked about the open field.

‘I’ll find another bladder. I’m sure there are lots going spare.’

Ériu shakes his head, ‘No, it’s getting boring.’

‘Chase, then? “It”, or something.’

Ériu makes a face, ‘I don’t want to do any more running.’ Cymru heartily agrees. ‘What about stories?’

Alba snorts, ‘How will that work if they can’t all understand it.’

‘We can translate.’

‘That’s just stupid.’

‘You’re stupid.’

‘How about the lake.’ Cymru cuts in quickly. The human children are close by, some running about on their own and others beginning to drift and talk in clumps. ‘We can slide on the ice and have races. Less running and we can use a rock instead of a bladder.’

Ériu looks at Alba, who avoids his eye to look down at Cymru. He then turns to observe the lake behind him. It is a cloudy day and the lake’s surface is dark, swallowing the reflections of the hills behind it so that it seems bottomless.

After a moment, Alba turns back, ‘Not a bad idea. Men were out there yesterday and it’s still cold today. Ice should be solid but we’ll need to get someone to check before we tell the others to follow us. One of the taller hunters; if he says it’s safe, we go.’

Ériu doesn’t seem convinced. ‘With all of us at the same time though? It might crack.’

‘There were deer on it the other day.’

‘That was the other day. It was sunny yesterday and what if the sun comes out again?’

Alba tuts and throws his hands up. Cymru knows that Alba will not take them on to the lake unless he was sure it will hold them, and also knows that Ériu will worry regardless of what Alba tries.

‘Hide and seek in the trees.’ He offers, ‘No one has to run, or talk to each other, and even the smaller ones can join in. And the hunts have already happened today,’ he adds for Ériu, ‘So the forest should be clear of anything dangerous.’

Cymru is satisfied when Ériu relaxes and Alba grins, impressed, ‘Yeah. That’ll do.’

A mad dash for the trees, Alba counting loudly at the edge in a mixture of languages, 1 2 3 in one and 4 5 6 in another.

With the field, campsite, and lake working as their designated hiding area, Cymru watches children scatter as Alba’s counting begins, his back to them. Cymru waits for them to clear and settle, keeping an ear on Alba’s voice, and searches for somewhere unique.

He knows not to stray too far. Mama has told them many stories of children who have become turned around forever by ancient trees, too confused and lost in the press of their trunks to ever find their way home again. The fae live within and they are tricky, fickle things- eager and hungry for wayward travellers. Everything can look the same if you’re not careful, Mama says, fae or not, so always find somewhere high above the treeline and keep it in sight when you walk somewhere new.

Luckily, there is a lot here to choose from- lake, hills. Cymru chooses the largest hill that crests over the trees to be his marker and begins.

The woods breathe. Whispered wind in the empty boughs of trees follow him above the high laughter of children, the hollow thumps of their feet on the forest’s earthen floor.

There is too much to choose from, yet also not much at all. Cymru is proud of himself when he finds a shallow cave, the top most rocks mossy and topped with a small, wizened tree, but several pairs of eyes already blink out at him from the mouth and so moves on quietly. The slope of a small hill has several bushes, but others have got to them first. Feet dangle overhead from branches he cannot reach, and some lay as half hidden shapes under old leaves, laying themselves down flat and still in the earth. One Cymru finds in the hollow of a fallen tree, and the tall girl presses a finger to her lips with eyes that plead with him to leave her there alone.

Far away, Alba stops counting and Cymru runs.

He jumps down a slope but at the bottom the hill with which he is marking his direction falls out of his sight so he scrabbles back up. He is tempted to press himself into its bank like some other children he’s seen, but he knows that Alba- keen, observant eyes- will find him. He wants to not be found first, wants to be good at the game he’s suggested- wants to win.

He hears running, hears footsteps come closer, and a mix of frustration and shame brings tears to his eyes.

Then, as he stands frozen and unsure, his mind blank, he spots a burrow. It is narrow, a stretched oval under the roots of an old tree which cover the entrance. Small and dark, it looks like a squeeze even for him but the leaves around it are undisturbed and a cobweb spans the top corner, from one root to the base of some nettles. Noone else has found it yet. Cymru sprints to it with relief.

He goes head first, arms brushing away more cobwebs that wait inside. The dirt floor of the burrow, damp at the entrance, dries the further he goes in and the air is cool and still. He is in to his chest when he catches it- the smell of animals, musky and heavy. He cannot tell how old this burrow is; it hasn’t been used long enough for the cobwebs to form, at least.

Cymru hesitates.

Then, he hears the shouts of Alba’s first victim, a cry of wounded glee, and he makes up his mind. It’s tight. He has to wiggle on his belly to go in further, the space too tight for him to crawl on hands and knees. He can feel his feet sticking out, kicking freely as he shifts, but he finds purchase on a root and, with one last firm kick, he is fully inside.

The earth holds him still. He breathes in, slowly, carefully, and feels the walls around him push back on all sides. His heartbeat slows as he relaxes and then all he can hear is himself, the outside world muffled and removed and distant. Inside the burrow it is silent, with no breeze or movement apart from himself.

It is a comforting feeling, to be contained so completely. He wonders if this is how babies feel, inside their mothers as they grow. Wonders if he had ever felt this way before, when he was wherever he had come from. Maybe he’d come from a burrow such as this, pushed up from the earth once fully grown and ready to be found by Mama. He cannot see how far ahead the burrow continues but when he stretches his arms out ahead, he meets nothing but air. Satisfied, he lays his head on his outstretched arms and closes his eyes.

Time passes. Then more.

Cymru can sometimes hear children, shouting and screeching as they’re found and Alba gives chase. He hears Ériu once, cackling and stomping somewhere nearby. Someone comes near enough to Cymru’s tree that he can feel them, the earth vibrating gently with each footfall as the muted sound reverberates through the ground. But no one finds him, and slowly but surely the sounds of the other children in this area of the forest soften, before disappearing altogether.

‘Ris!’

Then he jolts, hitting his head in the dark.

It is later. He knows this because he needs to relieve himself, and because his arm is numb underneath his head. One or both must have woken him.

He stretches as much as he can, and yawns, wiggling his fingers to relieve the needles that spike through. He wonders what is for dinner tonight, for surely it must be time for something to eat. From outside, there are voices.

At first, he doesn’t know what they are saying. They’re faint, far away. Then-

‘Ris!’

He thinks he hears Alba.

Then again-

‘Ris! Come out!’

Ériu.

If Cymru strains he can hear several more voices, all calling for him. The game must be over. Far from feeling elated though, he feels panic.

The children- he can hear them now, louder- call for him as ‘Cymru’, his true name. But his brothers call for him by the name which Mama gave him. It is a name that no one but family knows, a name that is just for himself, not for who he is, and his brothers using it means that something is wrong.

The thud of someone running, then Ériu is closer. He screams Cymru’s name, breathless as though he is running, and there’s a sharp edge of fear to his voice that Cymru has never heard before.

Cymru’s stomach goes cold. Ériu‘s fear flows into him and his mind works fast. How long has he been gone? How long have his brothers been looking? Mama is going to be so angry; he hopes that his brothers haven’t gone to her yet.

His brother’s voice grows quieter, he is moving away. The wrong way.

‘Ériu! Wait!’

Quickly, Cymru tries to push himself backwards. His hands slip on the walls, dirt crumbling into his eyes, his mouth, and he coughs. He tries again.

And again.

Each time, his hands slip. They cannot hold the force his arms need to move his body backwards. He tries, the floor, the ceiling. Tries with his feet, toes digging into the earth and smacking against the sides. Knees to floor, elbows to walls and hands everywhere at once but nothing gives. He is stuck. The more he wiggles, the more he can feel himself slip further inside, and mounting terror soon overwhelms him to leave him sobbing.

‘Alba! Alba, I’m here!’

His heart pounds like a drum in his hearts, blood rushing to his face, his neck. He wants to get out. He doesn’t care that Mama will know; he wants her to find him. Even if she drags him out in front of everyone he doesn’t care, he wants to go home. The walls around him grow tighter, the darkness blacker, and Cymru fights for breath and he chokes against tightening lungs.

‘ADAIR! PADARN! Help!’

As he struggles, he hears movement from within the dark. Something soft at first, a rustle under his crying, but then there’s a growl- warm breath on his knuckles, something wet dripping onto his split skin.

He is where he doesn’t belong, Cymru realises the moment before pain hits. He is a creature that is not where it should be, and what is going to learn the truth of what comes next.

He closes his eyes, crosses his arms across his face, and screams.

-----------------

He wakes to white hot fire.

It is all over him- his chest, his neck, his arms. A burning, searing agony that rips a cry from him as he twists, the darkness swimming and churning.

‘Shhhh, shhh my love.’

Cymru hears Mama. He feels her touch him, gentle and light on his shoulder but his skin shreds itself anew at the pressure and he arches away. He cannot see, cannot think- the pain is too great. Life has returned to a body that is not ready, a soul to a house it cannot call home. Cymru pushes his head back against whatever lies underneath it as the walls of his mind close in, biting down on a life too new to taste.

-----------------

When he awakes next, the shapes can move.

The agony is duller, arms stiff and wooden when he moves them.

‘Don’t.’ Ériu says. He sounds scared, nervous. In front of something he doesn’t understand, ‘Don’t touch it.’

Fingers on his chest, something cool laid over his eyes. Albion laughs in the background at the bray of a goat, and Cymru slips away.

When he returns to himself fully, confused and tired, he finds that it is Spring.

-----------------

Cymru does not consider himself a cautious man.

He is wary, as any living thing is, but not foolishly so. Life and death come together, he understands, and the possibility of death will not keep him from living. He has suffered many worse deaths than his first, and more of the same. Burning, beheading, quartering- so many terrible ways that man imagine death for themselves, on top of all the organic riches that nature provides.

He does not fear the ground, nor the dark. Not like Alba and the endless deep, nor Ériu and his complicated feelings. Still, Cymru knows himself to be changed.

Sometimes, when the voices around him are too loud, or the tensions in the air too high, Cymru feels the edges of his mind grow dark. Invisible earthen walls press closer on all sides, his breathing tightens, his heart races, and he finds himself walking- up up up. Up into the sky, up to the tallest thing he can see, where the world can swing freely under his feet and the ground cannot swallow him. Back where he should be and where he is safe, above the earth with nothing but the airy sky around him.

There are times when he does not even know what he is doing until he is up there- the sun sinking lower in the sky when before it had been morning. Sometimes, he takes himself before he needs to go, knowing what will come if he doesn’t. The world changes, humans move in with their cement and brick, but there are always places left for him to go. Untouched hikes, lonely crags of his northern mountains where humans fear to walk lest they become lost and topple off the sharp, unseen edge. Cymru knows his lands like he knows his people, knows them more than he knows himself, and knows that his land will always hold some places hidden, just for him.

Perched on the edge of perilous drops, his feet far above the floor below, Cymru feels more himself than he does anywhere else. For this, he knows he is luckier than most.

-----------------

AN:

This came from a very old headcanon explored in Wind Walk, Afterlife, and even chapter 2 of this fic. I hope my Wales makes more sense to you now!

For anyone who had questions about Wales from Ériu’s chapter, you’ll just have to wait for the next update to see if you can unpick things 😉

As for their names: ‘Adair, Padarn, Ris’- the names I usually use for the British Isles siblings are actually newer than the time period I am writing this fic in. But, I wanted the affect of their human names to be used and so chose the closest approximations I could for them to still be recognisable.

Thanks for reading!

#aph wales #hws wales #hetalia #hws #aph scotland #aph ireland #hws scotland #hws ireland #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #hws british isles #historical hetalia #heroes writes #aph england

79 notes · View notes

oumaheroes · 10 months

Text

Do Not Go Gentle

Cymru

Albion

Alba

Warnings for death

--------------------

Ériu

Ériu first dies when he is too old.

They’re all there now, his new brothers along with himself and Alba. Young Cymru, short, stout, and gentle. Albion younger still, all bones and teeth and impatience. Mama is gone. Lost somewhere a few years ago, when they woke up one morning to find her missing, nothing there but her favourite cloak laid over them all still warm with the smell of her. Cymru too, lain awake teary eyed and refusing to speak of it.

He is ten, he thinks, physically. Two hundred, maybe more. Ériu’s body is taller, shadow longer and fuller. He feels more capable, at any rate, and notices how their people change in their manner towards him, parental to deferential, opinions asked for more and more. His people, his brothers’, theirs- the lines between them grow sharper every year.

Ériu is careful.

Does not go out alone in bad weather. Prays to the Gods before crossing the sea, never goes in when it is rough. Walks along paths well-trodden unless in a group, plans meticulous watches with Alba when they travel alone together at night, listening keenly to the hungry sounds of the forest whilst the other sleeps. He thinks before he does, debates and considers the risks before every action. Where is the danger? What could happen? How can I stop it?

Alba knows what he runs from. He says Ériu is too cautious. Says that death will come for him eventually and putting it off will only make it worse. Says that Mama spoilt him with her fretting and that he is rotting inside for the privilege. Despite himself, Ériu knows that he is right. It is worse, waiting with it. The expectation and fear of the inevitable fermenting inside him, growing and swelling and making him throw away food he cannot afford to waste because he is unable to convince himself that the colour is right.

But Ériu does not want to die. He hears Alba cry out sometimes at night, knows that he muffles the dark memories of one particular rainy day into his pack and pulls Albion closer when he veers towards deep water. And Ériu recoils from it.

Death is a funny thing.

It comes to the careful anyway.

--------------------

It is already hot. Sun high in the sky and the morning is clear and cloudless.

Albion lazes fat in the shade of a bush, aimlessly pulling blackcurrants off the branches that lie close overhead to drop into his waiting mouth. Alba glares across the meadow towards the distant hills, feet a tap tap tapping an anxious tattoo on the banks of hedgerows.

Cymru is not there.

‘He knows we need to go.’ Alba says, ‘Where the fuck is he?’

‘He’ll be fine.’ Ériu says. ‘He’ll be back in a minute.’

Ériu is mending his fishing nets, the weave unthreading in the middle to let desperate, lucky fish slip through. They were going to the coast, to the stretch of land that met their shared sea for them to travel back across. He does not want to go. The land they are in at the moment feels more like home to him, this side of the water, and he is more than happy to indulge Cymru’s unintentional delays.

Alba seems to know it. He turns to glare at him, his bags already packed and slung over one arm. ‘When did you notice him go?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘He’s not here though, is he.’

‘He’s only gone for a walk. You know he likes being up high; I bet he’s gone up to the top there to see the view and sit a while. He’s been gone since sunrise so he’ll be back soon.’

‘No, he won’t.’

Both of them stop to stare at Albion, still happily on his back in the shade.

Albion must feel their eyes because he sits up, looking defensive as if expecting to be proven wrong. He grabs for some more currants higher up, tunic riding up as he stretches, juice staining his hands, and points out the suddenly obvious, ‘He took his bag with him, didn’t he.’

Cymru did.

Alba swears and kicks at the dirt, looking towards to the sky anxiously as if it were about to break. ‘We won’t get to the village in time if we don’t go now.’

‘We can set off tomorrow.’ Albion points out but Alba’s not listening. They’ve all been this side of the sea for a while and Ériu guesses that Alba is feeling anxious for home, wanting to feel more himself as he does there than here. The coast is a week’s walk away and the weather can change from bright to brutal in a blink. Alba will not take them if the skies change.

‘I’ll get him,’ Ériu says. He folds his net away and stands, sharing a knowing look with Alba who turns away, hiding his expression. ‘I’ll be back before night.’

‘Can I come?’

‘No. You’re too slow.’ Alba clamps a hand around Albion’s arm and Ériu leaves before things get heated.

It is a nice walk. Ériu can see why Cymru chose it. Animal trails wind up the slowly rising hill, a narrow line through bushes and grasses flanked tall either side until Ériu stumbles out into the clear again, unaware of how high he is until he sees the grasslands roll away from under him in a gentle bulge of earth, green and dappled with trees. He would stop here, if it were him. He’d settle down with some food, right as the terrain changed, and watch the world go by from his midway point between two realms, not quite above, not quite below.

But Cymru likes to see the whole world beneath his feet and so Ériu pushes on, feeling the burn in his muscles and the sweat on his skin as the incline gets steeper and the paths gets rockier- single, large boulders cresting from the soil until they all blend together in bursts.

Ériu finds him as the sun begins to descend. Cymru is right at the top as he’d expected, on the edge of an overhang and content on his stomach. He has his whole upper half, arms, chest, and head, dangling over the edge, a stick in hand to poke at some stones below. The soon to be darkening sky and the fact that he cannot see his brother’s head makes Ériu’s gut flash with fear. He imagines Cymru falling, sees him vanish over the edge before Ériu can stop him, his hands clutching at nothing but air before he too then falls. Down down, neck snapping, bones breaking, darkness waiting for them at the hard, lonely bottom.

Two strides and he wrenches Cymru sharply back by the collar, ignoring his yelp of pain to drag him away from the edge. Ériu staggers with the weight of him, rocks rolling underfoot, and they both splay back into the scraggly grass. Something sharp nicks him in the shin- an edge of a rock, disturbed and jagged- but Ériu is too panicked to care.

‘What on earth are you doing!’ he shouts, scrabbling to his feet- Cymru is okay, he’s there-, ‘You know we were supposed to be leaving today.’

‘I’m sorry!’ Cyrmu rolls up to his knees, face dusty and shocked, ‘I thought that I’d only be quick-‘

‘Don’t be a dammed liar; you’ve got your bag with you.’

Cymru averts his eyes, his reasons stuck tight between his lips and Ériu is too relieved he’s away from the edge to take the time to pry them free.

Ériu clips him around the ear, throws Cymru’s bag into his chest, and, without a word, stalks away to lead them down again.

He thinks of it again as they go. Hears the crunching sound of Cymru’s shoes on the loose stones and dry twigs as snapping bone against flesh. Imagines the tumbling fury of it in his mind’s eye, the all-encompassing agony of that impact. He grabs Cymru’s hand to tug him along faster and doesn’t let go until they’re deep into the bushes again, edge of the hill hidden from view and its deadly incline gentler.

He checks them over as they stop to rest near the base where the lands smooths almost flat. Cymru has some scratches to his hands from breaking his fall and Ériu himself has a cut across his shin, no bigger than an inch in length. But nothing more. A worthy price to pay, he thinks, compared to what could have been.

--------------------

The next morning, the split skin around his shin is hot.

‘What’s wrong?’

The next, it is even hotter.

‘Hey.’

The third day, worse. When he changes the shoddily done wrapping Ériu smells that it has festered. The panic sets in. He hears his brothers down the stream from him, two talking, one laughing, and cold fingers grip inside his chest and squeeze him tight enough to close his throat.

He tracks the growth of the darkening, reddening skin by each freckle and mole it passes, willing it desperately to stop. With each new conquest it makes, the feelings of dread grow stronger and colder, and the more he pushes his reality away.

Cool hand in his own. Cymru stares up at him, worried. ‘You’re limping.’

It usually goes away. Why isn’t it going away.

‘Hurt my ankle.’ Ériu says and flicks Cymru’s nose to stop him frowning. ‘It’ll be fine by night time.’

‘You were limping yesterday.’ Cymru apparently won’t be distracted, ‘But it’s worse now.’

Ériu shrugs and forces himself to stand straighter. It is hot. Cloudless skies and a burning sun. What he wouldn’t do for a rest by a cool lake.

It was only small. It can’t be too bad; it was only small. Small things heal.

Ériu grips the strap of his bag and carries on.

Cymru keeps more silences than just his own. He slows his pace to match Ériu’s and takes Albion’s bag from him to make him look excusably more laden. When Alba calls to hurry them as the sun goes down, it is Cymru he focuses on.

--------------------

‘Show me.’

Alba by firelight, hair the colour of polished bronze. He could only be distracted for so long.

Cymru and Albion sleep nearby. Ériu eyes them, then Alba, and slowly, carefully, rolls up his trouser leg to share his nightmare.

It is bad. Something has got into him, under his skin and down further and through the bone. Alba comes over to see better and they both analyse the now weeping, stinking sore with cool, blank faces. The leg is starting to swell.

‘How long?’

‘Four days. It keeps going.’

Alba nods and licks his lips. Goes to touch Ériu’s poor leg, then doesn’t. ‘We need to go to the people. Maybe the rot can be stopped.’

Ériu hesitates, then nods. Allows hope in and forces himself to forget briefly all of the memories he has been replaying of the final hours of writhing men and sobbing children, their skin sore and angry just like his after something tore at it. ‘There’s a settlement near the river. It’s not too much of a detour.’

Alba’s eyes are soft. It makes Ériu’s stomach tighten with cold again, ‘Can you get there?’

‘Yes.’ Ériu says firmly.

Alba nods, ‘Alright.’

He helps Ériu wrap it for the night, newly washed linen that one of them could have used as a shirt. Instead, it is used to hold Ériu together, and he and Alba lay quietly side by side, watching the stars through the trees and listening to the snap of the fire.

It helps, if only for a night.

When their people greet them, Ériu can hardly walk.

Thoughts do not stick with him long. He steadily worsens, the final steps are a blur, and he is tipped from Alba’s arms into a strangers’, hot cheeks pressed to shoulders as he’s carried up the mound at a run.

Then a house.

A fire.

Some blankets, then none. Cool air on his skin, a small hand in his own. The fur of heavy pelts, the cool lightness of linen- something soft under him. Wetness on his forehead. Voices around him, talking and talking and talking but no sense in any of it that he can catch.

Something presses on his leg and clarity bursts in shrieking, the agonising pain flooding up and through him to escape high and shrill, a sound unlike anything he has ever made before. He sees his leg through tears, the skin bubbling and curling away from the angry red centre, and he kicks out to be free of all of it.

Someone is crying.

Darkness swims on the edges but Ériu refuses to go.

--------------------

‘I can make it quick.’ Alba is above him. His expression is serious.

They are alone. This Ériu knows by the air, the lightness of few people in a large space, and that he can hear nothing but absences and his own laboured breathing.

He wants Mama.

Alba shifts beside him. He glances about, turning to look over his shoulder before leaning close to whisper, ‘If you want me to, I can do it. I can make it go faster.’

Ériu weakly shakes his head and whimpers, temples pulsing.

‘Shhh.’ Alba’s hand cups his cheek and he strokes Ériu’s hot skin with his thumb, ‘It will be okay.’

‘No…’

‘It will be better than this. This is the worst part.’ Alba looks from one eye to the other, a horrible, knowing look in his eye. He looks older, haunted, ‘I promise.’

Ériu shakes his head again. His leg burns, it is hard to focus, but he knows exactly what his brother is offering. Death has got to Alba already, and it has eaten away at the gift of innocence that childhood once granted him to be replaced with something bitter and hard. It was a look that Mama once sometimes had, gazing off across fields to something that only she could see and remember. It is a look Ériu is fated to share.

He does not want it. Not yet. He does not wish to know how much death stings, does not wish to return changed. He has seen too much life for this moment to be easy, Alba had been right with his warnings. Worse than the fear of the unknown was the fear of the known that was doomed to come.

Life kicks inside his chest, a silly mortal desire he hasn’t yet tested.

‘It is happening, whether you like it or not.’ Alba brushes the tears from under Ériu’s eyes, ‘There is only one thing left.’

What if he does not return? What if someone else returns inside of him, someone new?

‘Let me make it easier.’

Ériu’s eyes drift to the smoke hole in the thatched ceiling above. Smoke curls past herbs strung to dry in the rafters, yarrow and rosemary and nettles, and Ériu watches as it unfurls towards the heavens.

--------------------

Alba lied.

There are no words to describe the agony that follows.

--------------------

Ériu wakes slowly.

Someone is humming, fingers playing in his hair.

Ériu opens his eyes to find Albion sitting cross-legged next to him on the floor. He stops humming when he sees that Ériu is awake but continues to brush his fingers through his hair, seemingly unbothered by the gritty feel of it.

‘Finally. You took ages.’ Albion glances at him, then away. His eyes are red, ‘Thought you might be dead for real.’

‘You’d be lucky.’ Ériu’s throat is dry and dusty but his voice is still there.

Albion grins and gets up to get him water, carefully and quietly stepping around Cymru still asleep next to him. Alba is there too, arm around Cymru as if to keep him in place.

The house is communal. People are everywhere but they’re a polite distance away, giving Ériu’s family their space whilst still being within help’s easy reach. Ériu lifts a stiff arm out of his blankets to touch the hard, dry earth beneath the floor’s rushes, and knows exactly where and who he is.

--------------------

When North arrives, Ériu is conflicted.

Life is different now. Softer in as many ways as it is harder and death wears different disguises than the ones Ériu grew up with.

His youngest brother has clean drinking water, good food. A varied diet that is richer than anything Ériu would once have ever been able to imagine- fruits and vegetables and meats that still sometimes feel new to him. North’s bed is warm, and guaranteed each night. The medical men and women around him are highly trained, their science always advancing, and his clothes are well made and tailored for the weather. He has several homes, and is always welcome in all of them.

North has four grown men around him, thousands of years’ experience to each of them, who want for him a life they hadn’t been lucky enough to have themselves. North will not die from silly mistakes.

But North does need to die.

Ériu balances fate with reasoning. Lets North drive alone at night, even though he cannot legally do so. Turns the other way when North takes up smoking in parks with newly made human friends. Ignores any signs of reckless behaviour that could easily be curbed or prevented.

Only Cymru disagrees. For reasons Ériu doesn’t understand, Cymru frets like Mama once did, watching North carefully as if making up for a secret past failing.

It is a fruitless effort. North needs to know what it is to feel the edges of mortality, as all of them know. And Ériu knows that waiting will only ever make it worse.

#aph ireland #hws ireland #aph scotland #hws scotland #aph england #hws england #hws wales #aph wales #hws british isles #aph brit bros #aph #hws #hetalia #historical hetalia #aph uk bros #heroes writes

134 notes · View notes

oumaheroes · 9 months

Note

I miss the UK bros, how are they doing this time of day? Getting into trouble? Fighting? Getting absolutely pissed drunk and singing as they walk home? Fighting? How are my boys?

~Izzy

I'm very glad you asked 😌

This fic also relates way back to that poll I had, wherein I asked people who they wanted to see Wales written with in a small fic. The answer was a brother, so I chose North!

Characters: Wales, Northern Ireland, UK Bros referenced

Warnings for graphic details of butchery

------------------------------

Art Show

‘So, do you think I should ask them?’

‘I think they’ll be offended if you don’t.’

‘Yeah, but should I.’

Wales looked up from the dead sheep he was laying out on the old fashioned stone table and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, ‘Do what you want, love. It’s your art show.’

‘Yeah but that’s you saying that there’s still a right answer.’ Leant against the rough outside brick of the barn nearby, North spun his mobile between his forefinger and thumb, the screen a dark mirror catching the sun.

With a far brighter flash of light, Wales picked up his boning knife from its spot on the table and wiped the back of it on his overalls. North eyed it, then the dead sheep, and ignored the urge to head back inside.

‘There’s not a right answer,’ Wales said slowly, ‘I’m just telling you that they will be upset if you don’t invite us.’

‘You’re invited.’

‘If you don’t invite all of us.’ Wales gave him a pointed look, conveying to him the need to honour a long-held understanding (long, at least, to North’s lifetime) that there were certain things that must be done As A Family. To exclude one or more of them from one of these unspoken events was a sure-fire way to surface old grudges North didn’t even want to try to understand. Annoyingly, most of these events involved himself.

‘I think it will be nice.’ Wales offered to the silence. ‘You and your friends’ work all hung up in a proper gallery, a chance to walk around your college. We could even go for dinner afterwards. Like...’

Wales stopped himself, maybe hearing the impossible wish in his words that made North feel embarrassed and hungry for it at the same time. Silently, Wales twisted the sheep to the position he wanted it and then, in one practised movement, slit the whole thing from throat to groin. North gagged and turned away.

Wales clucked at him in concern, gaze still focused on the sheep and the knife, ‘Are you alright?’

North didn’t trust himself to speak. He clamped his jaw tightly shut, turning back to focus on the green hills beyond the farm over Wales’ shoulder, and gave him a thumbs up.

‘It’s nice of you to watch but you really don’t have to.’

North had offered to help him, actually. Wales was very kind to omit that.

‘Alisdair will think it’s pointless.’ North continued thickly, watching Wales skin the sheep in a few quick, strong tugs, his shoulders tightening and broadening under his baggy shirt before softening away again.

‘Oh, he can piss off. He just doesn’t know what to do with himself in a place like that.’

‘He thinks me being in college at all is stupid.’

‘He’s a hypocrite. He’s had human friends before. And more human lives than I can count.’

‘He might not even come.’

‘He will.’

That’s what North was actually worried about. He knew all of them would turn up if he asked them to, they had for everything else. School plays when he was much younger, football and rugby games, sessions in parliament- there was always one of them present in all of his early achievements. Older now though, it felt strange. North didn’t know what was worse, Scotland grumbling and picking fault in the entire thing and North’s enjoyment of it, or maybe Patrick finding it all amusing. Like a hobby or passing fancy North had picked up, rather than anything to be taken seriously. It was only an end of year art show, for a module he took only because some of his friends had chosen it, but he’d found that he’d liked it. He’d worked hard on his final piece and wanted that to be recognised.

The idea of them all together, in a place he had chosen and cultivated separately for himself, felt too much like a clashing of two worlds that he was averse to see coming together. With their different accents and odd turns of phrase, they were a hard thing to normalise and explain away even if they did behave themselves.

Wales waved his knife towards the smaller building that bordered the barn, ‘I’ve left the slop bucket behind. Fetch it for me?’

‘I don’t know why you have to do this yourself.’ North called behind him as he jogged over to the door, ‘It’d be easier to take them to the butchers when they need to go.’

‘It’s important to do things yourself sometimes,’ Wales said simply when he returned. He dropped some gory looking shapes into the bucket, and they hit the bottom with a wet smack. The meaty smell of them made North feel sick, ‘You forget things if you don’t practise- easy to take the new alternatives for granted. And it always tastes better when you’re part of the process, more like how I remember.’

Wales looked at him and then back to the sheep, ‘Don’t leave anything to waste, if you can help it. This’ll make a lovely mutton stew; keep me going for days.’

North stared into the bucket warily, not feeling very hungry at all.

‘I‘d enjoy myself if I went.’ Wales said, his hand back somewhere North couldn’t look at for too long, ‘I really want to go, and I know they would do too, if they knew about it. We’ve never had many chances to enjoy small things like this for what they are.’

North toed the grass, feeling uncomfortable, ‘I suppose I could ask Alisdair when we go to the gig next week. See what he says and then tell Arthur and Patrick.’

Wales gave him a wide smile. Something inside the sheep cracked, ‘I think that’s a wonderful way to do it.’

‘You can't take any pictures though.’

Wales’ smile dropped, ‘Why?’

‘All of my friends will be there; no one else will be doing it.’

‘Of course they will.’

‘Not as many as you do.’

Wales rolled his eyes, ‘How about the small camera? My “digi-cam”- I can take that?’

‘No one uses those anymore.’

Wales pulled a face, ‘I’m sure they do. I only got that a few years ago.’

‘It was at least 15.’

Wales shrugged, unbothered, and dropped a few more horrible looking things into the slop bucket, ‘My camera phone then.’ Then, when North made a noise- ‘and I’ll only ask for one posed one.’

‘Fine.’

#aph wales #hws wales #aph northern ireland #hws northern ireland #hws british isles #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #hetalia #aph #hws #heroes writes

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oumaheroes · 9 months

Text

The Missing

(Victorian Snatched AU)

Summary: ‘For a moment, they stood looking at each other in silence. Alisdair felt the stirrings of something in his chest, a sensation of things being out of place and about to fall. ‘Is he not here?’‘

Arthur is missing. With no money and no help from the law, Alisdair searches alone.

Characters: England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales

Chapter 1

-------

Arthur, four. All quiet in the carriage on the way home from their mother’s funeral, Patrick riding up top with the driver and the rest of them inside. Arthur’s best clothes, not even that old, were still starch stiff and pristine despite the long day. He and Rhys were too young for proper black mourning attire but Arthur had treated his clothes as if they were just that, fearful of the puddles in the muddy path of the churchyard lest he dirty them. The biggest show of restraint Alisdair had ever seen him make.

Their father sat beside him, drunk. He’d been so the entire day, if Alisdair were to be more honest, but had continued to get worse throughout the service, a hidden flask on him at all times that allowed him to take secret swigs whenever he thought no one was looking. He filled the seat on his and Arthur’s side, a tense, swell of human being that hunched down to tug at his hair with his hands and rock backwards and forwards gently.

As they turned the corner away from the church, he choked back something, a sob or a curse Alisdair couldn’t tell, and suddenly he pulled Arthur into his arms to hold him close, pressing his face into his body.

Arthur stiffened and looked to Alisdair beseechingly. Their father never touched them, had never once held him as far as Alisdair had seen, but despite his displeasure Arthur stayed there quietly, looking to Alisdair the entire time.

--------------------

It was exceptional, how the brain handled panic. How it could take even the most horrifying situation and somehow skew some sense and calm into it.

On the annex outside Patrick and Arthur’s bedroom, Alisdair turned Arthur’s teddy over in his hands, noting its damp fur and smudges of moss which clung to it- residue from the drain and its night beside it.

Patrick thundered into the bedroom behind him, breathless and echoey on the bare floorboards, ‘Anything? Al!’

‘Out here.’ Alisdair stood. The night was still early enough for the streets to retain the last of the day’s traffic, the handover of commuters travelling home to public house wanderers still ongoing. A loud cackle from a lady of the night in the distance, a siren’s song by the docks.

Alisdair held up Arthur’s bear in answer to Patrick’s question and watched understanding grow across his features.

‘Jesus.’ Patrick held a hand to his mouth and sank heavily onto the window ledge by the bed. He looked out to the London skyline behind Alisdair, scanning the rooftops as if hoping to see Arthur somewhere out there, ‘How… He didn’t run aw-?‘

‘Of course he fucking didn’t.’

‘Well, then where-‘

‘Christ! I don’t know where. If I knew where we wouldn’t be here, would we? Fucking idiot.’

Patrick buried his face into his hands with a deep moan and Alisdair turned away to look at the homes on either side of them.

All of the houses in this area were the same, a quick springing up of brick tenements to deal with the influx of population as the inner city swelled and broke its banks. Old villages swallowed up under the growing capital, communities wiped out and redone in their newly mixing masses. The new factory-worker homes all had the same design; flat annex roofs rose like stairs up the hill of street, fat bellied chimney stacks shared by two homes each. Between them all a rabbit’s warren of streets, dark and winding to the dark glitter of the Thames.

It was immense. Alisdair felt his heartbeat quicken, a fist in his throat squeezing it tight.

‘I thought he was with you.’ Patrick said quietly, head still in his hands, ‘I would never have-‘

‘Don’t, Pat.’ Alisdair couldn’t handle that conversation yet.

‘I don’t understand. He… I thought-‘ Patrick cut himself off. Alisdair heard him breathe behind him, taking shallow and quick gulps of air, ‘What do we do now?’

Alisdair shook his head mutely, looking from one narrow alleyway to another. He heard Patrick come out onto the roof behind him, the wet crunch of his feet on the gritty concrete.

‘This can’t be happening.’ His brother’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. Where did he go?’

Alisdair longed for a pipe, or a drink. Something to stop the numbness in his chest, something familiar and normal to force everything to make sense again. It was a struggle to speak.

‘I think someone took him.’

Patrick reared back, ‘Piss off. From where.’

‘Here. The bedroom.’

‘… the bedroom?’

‘Arthur told me the last night.’ Alisdair forced himself to name his own failures. ‘He’d come in to me and Rhys again and woke me up. When I took him back, he told me that he thought someone was watching him.’

Patrick moved to the window, closing the pane and opening it again with one hand. It moved cleanly and smoothly in one go. Alisdair remembered closing it the other night when he’d put Arthur back to bed, the rust from the fused catch sticking to his fingers. With no lock, it was far too easy to open, and Alisdair couldn’t think of why they’d chosen to leave it like that for so long. Maybe because they had nothing to steal, and anyone who knew them or stopped to glance at the house long enough would recognise that much.

Patrick must have been thinking along a similar train of thought. He opened the window again and leant inside to finger the fused metal catch at the top. ‘He’s been glad to see me when I’ve come home recently.’ He said, standing up from the bed and wiping his hands on his trousers, ‘He’s been awake each time, like he’s been waiting for me.’

‘He told me that someone had been coming up here when you weren’t in, walking about on the roof for the last week. He caught them looking through the gap in the curtain.’

Patrick was silent. Alisdair couldn’t look at him, he didn’t want to see either judgment or pity on his brother’s face. ‘I thought he had been having nightmares, or half-heard a chimney sweep passing over. I thought that he was scared and was saying anything he thought might get me to stay. But now…’

Alisdair had meant to only relay what had happened, the facts and nothing else, but his words sounded like an excuse to him once said out loud, like an attempted dismissal of guilt. Why had he left him. Why hadn’t he kept him with himself and Rhys. The questions were already haunting him.

Patrick clicked his tongue and walked out on the centre of the annex, looking to the houses and their roofs either side, ‘That can’t be it.’

‘What else could it be?’

‘Why would anyone do that?’

Alisdair shook his head and joined him. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been up there. No footprints or dropped items, or note explaining the situation. Windows were unbroken, the garden gate still closed. Whether it was locked or not didn’t matter, it was easy enough to climb over and if someone had been using the roofs to cut across, that wouldn’t even factor into it. The only thing out of place, Arthur’s bear, told them nothing other than Arthur had been out here at some point. Or, had thrown his most precious possession outside, to then leave another way without it. None of those options made sense.

None of this did.

‘He’s seven.’ Patrick chewed the inside of his cheek, ‘We don’t have any money to ransom him. No one we know would want him. We have nothing worth bargaining for. And he can’t… he can’t do anything; he’s not got a trade to be used.’

There was always more to offer than money. A life could go for anything, if the right price was asked.

‘He’s small.’ Alisdair said slowly, ‘and he can read and write. It’s more than most.’

‘It’s not worth-‘

‘It could be, Pat.’

Patrick’s jaw tightened. ‘Whatever happened, someone must have seen him go. Surely someone would have noticed if he was taken, Arthur wouldn’t exactly go gently.’

Alisdair breathed in deep through his nose, then out. Damp coal fire air, the smell of late nights and winter. He looked to Patrick; his one boot still untied. He looked young, half dressed in too large a coat like a teenager again masquerading as an adult version of himself. Alisdair checked his watch, tilting it until he could see the numbers of the dial in the moonlight, ‘You need to go to work.’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to be late if you don’t go now.’ Patrick’s mouth opened, then closed, and Alisdair looked back to the dark streets on the downward slope of the hill below. ‘They’ll drop you if you miss a day. You know that.’

‘I’m not going to work.’ Patrick said incredulously, ‘Are you serious?’

Alisdair felt the bear in his hand. Rhys had been telling Arthur that he’d fix it up for months now. It still wasn’t done.

‘I can’t go to work not knowing where he is.’ When Alisdair walked to the edge of the annex, wanting to calculate the drop, Patrick came around to join him and grabbed him by the shoulder, ‘Al, for God’s sake-‘

Alisdair shook him off, ‘You’re going to have to.’

‘Arthur’s gone.’

‘I know. He is.’

‘Then-‘

‘We can’t afford you not to.’

‘Alisdair-‘

‘Think about it Patrick! Do you think I want to ask you?’

Patrick said nothing for a while. Alisdair turned away again and heard Patrick shift his weight from one foot to another. Alisdair imagined that he was doing as he himself was- looking out to the shipyard on the river where the heavy barges were waiting to be unloaded. Hundreds of men waited there each morning, hoping for the chance that only a few of them would get to be taken on. Salaried men like Patrick were lucky to know there was a guaranteed place for them with pay at the end of the day.

The tight, choked feeling in Alisdair’s throat grew. He rubbed at his neck, hand shaking.

Eventually, Patrick said, ‘Then what are you going to do.’

‘Go looking. I’ll go around the streets and ask about.’

Another beat of silence. Alisdair could feel Patrick waiting behind him still, not wanting to leave things like this, broken and splintered like glass, but also knowing as Alisdair did that the rent was due. The debts were still there, even if Arthur wasn’t.

‘Try the sweeps.’ He said eventually, ‘There’s a local few always down by the King’s Arms around this time.’

Alisdair nodded but said nothing more. Patrick left, the door closed, and Alisdair watched his head pass under street lamps below until it vanished from view.

Rhys was in the kitchen when Alisdair went inside, sat at the table with a mug of something hot between his hands. He stared into it fixedly, drawn and dazed behind the steam in the yellow flicker of the tallow candle lamps.

Alisdair stopped in the doorway, his arms across his chest. ‘Did you hear, then?’ He asked softly.

Rhys nodded and hunched over his hands, pulling the mug in close. ‘Most of it. You were loud enough.’

Alisdair opened his mouth, a habitual platitude already there, and then closed it again. ‘I’ll go out and look. You go up knock up the street and then wait here, just in case.’

Rhys sniffed and looked up, ‘Just in case?’

Alisdair shook his head and reached for his coat.

--------------------

The alleyways and streets of London twisted around and in on themselves, thin, spindly webs of spider silk between wide caverns of thoroughfares.

Alisdair moved quickly and aimlessly through the unempty night, past drunks and the homeless in their makeshift beds, their huddled bodies revealed by the islands of light cast by the gas lamps as propped in corners or on front steps. They watched him curiously, noting him immediately as out of place, and he felt their eyes and judgement follow him home.

--------------------

‘No one saw anything.’

Rhy greeted Alisdair hours later in the dark, shoulders hidden under blankets by a dying fire. He jumped up when Alisdair came in, only to sink down again into the fraying armchair when he saw that he was alone.

‘Thirty-seven was asleep with her kids, thirty-five is still that single bloke who drinks in pubs alone- he wasn’t in.’ Rhys spoke his findings to the embers as Alisdair sat heavily in the spare chair, body bone tired and numb, ‘Thirty-three and thirty-six didn’t answer, Mr Tanner’s deaf, and thirty-four is the new family from China who don’t speak English.’

‘The rest of them?’

‘No.’

‘How far did you go?’

Rhys sat back on his haunches, his expressionless profile flickering orange as he looked into the fireplace. ‘Until I couldn’t see the house anymore.’ He turned to Alisdair, his lips tight, ‘Are you sure that-‘

‘Rhys.’

His brother shook his head and picked at the edges of the blanket, ‘Twenty-eight said they heard someone scream. Like a woman, or a child.’ He said the words quietly, hardly more than a whisper as if he were afraid to speak them. When Alisdair didn’t reply, Rhys looked at him, eyes searching, ‘We would have heard, wouldn’t we? If he had.’

Alisdair slowly began to untie his boots. Rhys moved closer across the floor on his knees, ‘We would know. You would have heard, Patrick might have-‘

Alisdair tugged off his boots and stood up abruptly, ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

Rhy’s mouth tightened, lips pressing together to form a thin line. He shook his head and hunched over, fist under the blankets hard to his chest as if he were holding himself in.

Neither of them slept that night. Patrick came in to join them in bed hours later, the smell of fish clinging to his skin and hair like smoke under his bedclothes. They were too big to all fit together comfortable but he wedged himself in against the wall, Rhys in the middle like they had done years ago before Arthur was born.

Together they passed the night awake, listening to the sighs of the city until the collective church bells chimed morning.

--------------------

AN:

Okay, so I said that I probably wouldn’t flesh this AU out beyond the first chapter and I was happy enough to let it lie mean and painful vague, but the story still tugs me too much to leave it alone. I hope that you liked this and it was worth the year wait!

The comment about Victorian mourning is a small nod to a very complex and layered cultural movement in Victorian era Britain and parts of the extended empire. One easy site to read about this topic in brief can be found here, though please do some of your own research! I find it very interesting

Thanks for reading!

#aph england #aph scotland #aph ireland #aph wales #hws england #hws scotland #hws ireland #hws wales #aph uk bros #aph brit bros #hws british isles #victorian snatched au #heroes writes #hetalia #aph #hws

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oumaheroes · 1 year

Note

I need more brit bros in my life 🥺 pls, i am starving, i might succumb to the darkness and never return 😭

I will do anything for more brit bros please, i am down on my knees 🧎🏼‍♀️

~Izzy

Izzy, please don't starve, I know times are hard but I have a crumb for you 🙏 And longer things will come later, I promise

And Anon, I hope this fills your void too!

Characters: England, Northern Ireland

-----------

‘Why.’

‘You know why.’

‘What’s a shit answer.’

‘It’s a terrible question.’

‘Why.’

‘You know why, Sean.’ England clicked his tongue and sat up straighter in his seat. ‘You’re not seventeen.’

‘You’re right, I’m over a hundred.’

‘You don’t look seventeen.’

‘Oh come on, Art.’

‘Come on, Art? Come on, Ar- for fuck sake, “come on Art” what? You want me to change the law for you? Hmm? Somehow grant you special exemptions from what everyone else has to follow?’

‘Patrick would let me.’

England gave a sharp dark laugh, ‘On my roads? Sure. On his? You can fuck right off.’

‘Please.’

‘No.’ England said sharply, ‘You can drive on private land. You can go on youth courses. You can even go in an illegal Banger Race and burn out your needs there if that hell so suits you-‘

‘You’d never let me go in a Banger Race-‘

‘-but you are not getting a special driving licence. Not till you’re physically seventeen like everyone else.’

North groaned and dropped his head back against the headrest, ‘But I know how to drive.’

‘That tree you reversed into earlier says otherwise.’

‘It was a stump! I didn’t see it, it was too low down.’

‘So is a toddler.’

‘And toddlers won’t be running about the back of the car, will they!’

‘Look,’ England unclipped his seatbelt and turned to face North better, ‘Despite what you may think, I’m not being a hard arse. I’m not telling you no just to be cruel, or because I have a twisted sense of joy in your suffering-‘

North snorted.

‘-because woe betide you poor soul, with all of the perfectly good public transport available to you-‘

‘That’s not the point.’

‘I know it’s not the point.’ England put a hand on North’s shoulder, ‘The point is, you look too young. If you hit anything-‘ he gave North a warning look when he tried to interrupt, ‘-if you hit anything, or cause any sort of accident at all, then it’s going to be a legal and political nightmare. Doesn’t matter how old you are, or how well you can drive, it can’t be explained if anything goes wrong.’

‘It’s not fair.’ North said quietly. He ran his seatbelt between his thumb and forefinger. England’s old jeep hummed softly in the silence, the engine keeping the windows from misting up in the frigid January air.

‘I know it’s not.’

North wondered if England knew that he was talking about more than just the car, or being able to go out and drive one on the roads. It was the attached shackle of being trapped in a body that didn’t age, restricted by rules and milestones that he wouldn't be able to reach for an undefined time. Life unchanging and stunted by it. It was different from just being treated like the age of the face he wore, it was North being pinned in place by its rules.

His brothers had been physically far younger for far longer- North knew that without being told- but he was sure that they hadn't chafed against society as much as he did. Hadn’t been told no to everyday skills based on age alone. If they could physically do something, they did. Their bodies’ age hadn’t held them back from riding horses or sailing across oceans to die in wars they didn’t ask for, or that they did.

North couldn’t even drive to Tescos.

‘Come on.’ Evidently, the silence had stretched on too long for his brother to be comfortable. England squeezed North’s shoulder and clipped himself back in, ‘Let’s see how far we can get on what petrol we’ve got left.’

‘You mean until you get panicky when we get to half a tank and make us turn around.’ North pressed the clutch down and pushed the gearstick with some force into first. ‘You need to oil this.’

‘You’ve said. Three times.’

‘Well, it’s still stiff as shit, like.’

‘How on earth do you expect me to do anything about it now?’

‘Matt’s probably left some WD-40 in here somewhere.’

England chuckled, sounding fond, ‘Probably.’

Taking off the handbrake and releasing the clutch, North rolled the old jeep back onto the tiny road that ran through England’s rural estate.

As they drove, England began talking about something or other that was happening in London and North let his mind wander; the familiar tree lined roads and the early morning haze softening the sun making him feel lighter the further they drove. He was grateful that England hadn’t tried to push the issue, or convince him of anything. A change in the last twenty years that North was thankful for.

‘How about a pub lunch?’ England said after a time, ‘We’ll switch when we get near the B road and I’ll drive us to The White Hart.’

‘Will you let me get a pint this time?’

England pressed his lips together, ‘Only if you don’t tell Rhys.’

#aph england #hws england #hws northern ireland #aph northern ireland #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #hws british isles #arthur kirkland #hetalia #aph #hws #hetalia fanfiction #heroes writes #izzy anon

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oumaheroes · 4 months

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hi do you have any writings about the bothers bullying (brotherly bonding) england? like any type of pranks from a fake snake tied to his shoe to an ice cube down the back of his shirt. I really have a craving for them to just really push him around bc he's the youngest (not counting northern Ireland ofc) please and many thanks if you have any

I don't I'm afraid! (Kinda)

I don't think they're generally a fun kind of pranking family, or aim to do anything planned like that. They're more the type to verbally take the piss out of each other and are very opportunistic when it comes to pranks- if a possible attack point presents itself, they will use and abuse it. Things can quickly escalate, something is taken seriously, and before you know it they're scrapping on the floor only to be sharing a beer down the pub the next hour. Very quick and non-lasting swings and round-abouts

So they do, but they won't go out of their way to plan to be pranky or anything really so light hearted. They mostly bicker or fuck about

I have written them as being shits to each other many times but they're usually part of stories, rather than whole stories in their own right.

Here are some examples:

From Odd Socks:

Alasdair pressed a hand to his chest mock wounded, ‘My love, you sound surprised.’ ‘Arthur attempted to convince me that you’d planned to wear jogging bottoms.’ ‘Oh that’ll be Patrick’s idea, they had a dare on.’ ‘Ah. It almost worked.’ ‘I’m offended. But also not surprised.’ ... A muted crash and a cackle came from somewhere in the crowds and they both looked over to find Arthur, half staggered into a chair and scowling, and Patrick bent double with laughter nearby. Their mother turned and made her way over to them and Alasdair hissed in sympathy.

From I.C.E:

‘My nose is already half fixed, I’m surprised they’ve not noticed.’ ‘I could break it for you again, if you’d like.’ ‘Ha ha.’ Alisdair sighed and rubbed awkwardly at his eyes with his free hand, ‘I wish they’d turn these bloody lights down.’ ‘Concussion?’ ‘No, I just want to sit in the dark for fun.’ Alisdair closed his eyes and grimaced. He was obviously tired, face drawn and weary easy to spot even amongst the fresh bruising. Arthur wasn’t surprised. No matter how many times they had died or been hurt, no matter how long they had lived or how much they had endured, a primal, human fear of dying gripped them as much as it did any mortal man. A desperate, wild panic for life that overrode all logic, ignored all past experience to burn right through to that still human core of them. It was exhausting, and trialling death as blithely as they did not dull its sting or make it any easier to bear. He absentmindedly picked a few pieces of dirt and stray glass out of his brother’s hair and began to update the group chat they shared with Rhys, Sean and Patrick. ‘You the closest?’ Arthur pursed his lips, ‘Not your first choice I know, but I stayed in Meriden; Rhys went back to Cardiff.’ ‘With that attitude you’re certainly not.’ Alisdair thumped him gently in the stomach, ‘What time is it?’ ‘Three in the morning.’ Alisdair let out a soft whistle, ‘I got to Newcastle?’ ‘Just passed Middlesbrough. You’re in Newcastle now though; better A&E and I assume they thought you were critical.’ ‘I thought you sounded like less of a twat. Thank God they didn’t take me to Middlesbrough; a right shithole that is.’ ‘Stop it.’ ‘How are you getting on in here?’ A doctor opened the curtain and approached the bed. She introduced herself with a quick smile to Arthur and then leant forward so that Alisdair could see her properly, hands going to his neck brace, ‘Right, we can take this off; nothing concerning on the CT scan.’ ‘That’s a surprise.’ Arthur quipped. ‘Please ignore my brother, he gets antsy when he’s tired.’

The entirety of Afterparty, but particularly:

‘What’s the hold up?’ Scotland called from further down the little garden, the yellow light from the street lamps behind him obscuring the details of his face, ‘Come on I want to get in; he’s heavy.’ ‘I’m not fucking heavy,’ England hopped wildly on his one good leg as Scotland moved abruptly sidewards, the other ankle now noticeably swollen, ‘You’re just weak; I’m barely putting my weight on you.’ ‘Do you want me to throw you over to next door’s garden? Cos I bloody well will.’ ‘Oi, stop it a sec,’ Ireland called to them, putting his hand on Wales’ shoulder and giving it a light squeeze, ‘What are you doing, get us in.’ ‘You can piss off, you’re the reason my ankle’s fucked up.’ England wasn’t finished. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t insist on walking on it for two hours,’ Ireland shot back. ‘What else was I going to do? Drag myself across Cardiff?’ ‘I thought it was a pretty clear hint that I wanted to leave you behind.’ ‘Oh, so it was intentional, then?’ ‘You’ll be fine.’ ‘Of course I will but that’s not the point, is it?’ ‘If I had known you were going wilt like a tight-laced Victorian noblewoman, I wouldn’t have tried to move you aside.’ ‘You pushed me down a bank!’ Ireland gave a casual shrug but his grin grew wicked, ‘You were in the way.’

The entirety of Road Trip. Too much to quote haha

Whenever they all appear together in It's All About the Delivery:

‘What the bloody hell are you two doing here.’ In the doorway to the room was Lord Kirkland looking somewhat harried. His accent was different than it had been when the PM had spoken to him last at the manor, vowels distinctly sharper and more pronounced than before- glass cut and Eton grown rather than the roughened and gentle burr of yesterday. The PM made a note to ask Mr Williams about the change later. ‘Took you long enough,’ Alisdair said, cheerfully. Kirkland narrowed his eyes in suspicion and Alisdair’s expression grew sly, ‘We noticed that you’d left your guest alone so we thought we’d step in to lend a hand. Terrible manners that, turning up so late.’ ‘Why are you here. We’re supposed to be meeting at Downing Street (2).’ ‘We are, we are.’ ‘Were we supposed to be?’ Rhys looked confused. He turned to Alisdair, ‘You said we had to meet England here.’ ‘Did I?’ Alisdair feigned a look of exaggerated surprise, ‘Lord knows what happened there. Where on earth were you anyway.’ Kirkland’s jaw was clenched tight, ‘A sudden and unexpected diversion that I now have a feeling wasn’t the result of miscommunication at all.’ Alisdair tutted, ‘Ach, a shame.’

and, of course:

‘I told you about Mr Marchand’s problem, didn’t I?’ The PM opened his mouth to interject but promptly shut it again, recognising that there was no point, ‘Besides, if you’d have known what I was planning, you’d’ve told him.’ ‘”Him?” I do have a name.’ ‘Aye, I’m told it’s “Dirt”.’

...

She shooed him off and the PM crossed the room, noticing how both Alisdair and Rhys immediately paused their conversation at his approach. ‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted them and Mr Williams, ‘Where’s your brother?’ ‘You mean Dirt? Or is he mud pile today. I’m fond of ecological wasteland myself.’ ‘Alisdair.’

Lastly, there are also a couple of quips in Reset that are too small and numerous to many any particular one

#hws british isles #aph uk bros #aph brit bros #heroes answers #sorry i couldn't give you exactly what you wanted anon #but hopefully this treasure trove of small goodies will do!

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oumaheroes · 10 months

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quick! young matthew accidentally broke arthur's precious vase, how would scotland vs wales vs ireland react?

omg i'm going to probably go against your expectations but I don't think they'd do all that much. Matthew was such a quiet, well-behaved child that if he had broken anything he would most likely have burst into tears, tried to fix it, and then come clean himself

Everyone would know that it would have been an accident because again, Matthew wasn't the type of child to fuck around and he was very sure footed and careful. Depending on what was broken England wouldn't have minded all that much- he's more about sentimental items and cares more about intent than consequence (It's why he gives Australia plastic cups when he comes to visit to Shame Him)

So, in answer: they would probably help him clean it up if they were nearby and then tell England with him, or would send Matthew on his way with a cuff about the ear for worrying and would then tell Arthur to stop being such an idiot by leaving delicate things around children

If Matthew lost or damaged something of sentimental value (the first letters Alfred had written him, rings or jewellery from humans he treasures, hand carved ornaments or trinkets a lover made him) then there might be a bit of a bit of a meltdown. In these cases, if his siblings were nearby, they'd deal with him whilst he calmed down but would otherwise let Matthew suffer the consequences of his actions. In my headcanons, Arthur never hit his children or treated them poorly when young (era relevant parenting aside) and if Matthew had been careless with something truly precious, Arthur's brothers would trust him to be strict but fair once he calmed down

#heroes headcanons #hws england #aph england #hws canada #aph canada #aph brit bros #hws british isles #aph uk bros

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oumaheroes · 5 months

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I love your works with North! Do you have more storys with him and Scotland or England? ♥️

I do! And have a Wales too:

Wales and North

England and North

Scotland and North

All bros

He also makes a guest appearance in:

Do not go gentle

Reset

All About the delivery

#hws british isles #aph uk bros #aph brit bros #heroes answers

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oumaheroes · 11 months

Note

What do you think each of the UK bro's favorite books are from personal taste?

Detailed book headcanons found here

Wales- Something from Danielle Steel or Cecelia Ahern like 'P.S. I Love You', or some other such similarly sweet and sultry romance where two people overcome adversity to fall in deep, wholesome love. Needs spice for it to be his favourite though

England- Loves high fantasy. Favourite series he rereads constantly is probably 'Lord of the Rings' (as much for Tolkein's expertise in Old English and his love for English culture and folklore as the story itself). Read 'The Priory of The Orange Tree' recently though and absolutely loved it

North- Will tell everyone he loves graphic novels and horror if he reads anything but actually, secretly, loves historical fiction. He loves stories that can help make the past that he missed out on feel real and relatable. From 'Alias Grace' to 'The Book Thief', he'll read them all

Ireland- Likes to read poetry in the sun. This is what he's usually spotted reading, however he's as much a fan of fantasy as England is. Really likes the 'Narnia' and 'Game of Thrones' series

Scotland- Likes reference books, those with pretty images the best. Animal, landscape, astronomy- all that lovely jazz. Really likes the 'David Attenborough' ones. Will also devour a crime before bed

#aph uk bris #aph brit bros #hws british isles #heroes headcanons

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oumaheroes · 1 year

Text

Light At the End of the Tunnel

Day 31 of Whumptober

Comfort/ Bedside vigil/ ‘You can rest now’

Characters: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales

Day 30

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‘Oh God, what a day.’ Alisdair sat down heavily on the sofa- Arthur’s sofa. His nice one in London, not that antique son of a bitch they’ve both repaired entirely at least ten times- and melted into it, kicking his feet onto the coffee table, ‘I’m knackered.’

‘It feels as though the day gets longer every year.’ Rhys gingerly lowered himself into the armchair, rubbing at his calves, ‘I swear I'm not physically that old.’

‘It’s because you don’t walk enough,’ Sean told him. He sat down on the floor, back to the sofa, and Alisdair glared witheringly at him and his flexible, youthful bones.

‘Like you can talk.’

‘I can. I walk.’

‘Oh aye, sure you do. To McDonalds and back.’

Sean hooked an arm over the sofa cushion and turned to him with a raised eyebrow, ‘They have Deliveroo for that now.’

‘What?’

‘And okay I don’t hike, but I do other exercise.’

Alisdair snorted, ‘Like what.’

‘Skateboard.’

‘Skateboard! Hark at him,’ Alisdair nudged Sean with his knee, ‘a right Mr Sportsman.’

Sean flushed and looked away, ‘Shut up.’

‘He’s right though Rhys, you don’t go out enough.’

Rhys closed his eyes and flapped a hand at them, ‘I do this once a year, that’s enough.’

‘Have you always done this?’ Sean looked from one to the other, ‘Every Hallowe’en- Samhain?’

Alisdair and Rhys looked at each other. Their yearly walk to one of the veil’s thinnest places in their isles, the place where the world’s edges wore away to let slip through whatever waited on the other side, was something that had begun with Mama. Mama and all of her secrets, fingertips nudging them by the shoulder to step into the emptiness between cool, dark circles of stone, the whispering of a past already long forgotten brushing over their hair and catching in their clothes.

The ancient places were rarer now, built over and hidden by time and mankind’s mark on the earth. But there were some places left, pockets of raw energy lingering in all of their lands where, once a year, the earth and the sky, or the near and the far, met for just a day to breath life back into what remained. It was to there that they walked, feeling the new world give way to the old ways once again.

To feel what was left of Mama and all who had came before her, and after- the air heavy with something watchful and lost, more ancient than they knew anything else to be.

‘Not every year,’ Rhys began carefully, his eyes lingering on Alisdair’s for too long, ‘There have been bumps along the way.’

Sean huffed.

‘We’ve always done it though, even if not together. We all have some places left that we’ve kept safe and that need watching.’

‘Nothing will happen if we don’t though, right?’

‘We don’t go there for that.’ Rhys smiled, ‘We go there to experience it again.’

A childhood nostalgia as much as an innate draw, perhaps. Was it the old power that called Alisdair back to those stones, or the chance to reconnect with the oldest parts of himself. Tradition and respect both.

Sean didn’t answer. A few minutes of peace and then footsteps approached down the hall, Patrick coming in first, two mugs of tea in hand, followed by Arthur- both still as mud splattered and dishevelled as the rest of them.

‘Look at you old ladies,’ Patrick handed Sean a mug and sat himself next to Alisdair, ‘collapsed as soon as you got in here.’

‘Like you can talk, you sat at the kitchen table gassing and watched me make everything.’ Arthur passed a mug to Rhys first and then purposely placed Alisdair's tea out of reach on the table, eyeing his damp socks with distain. As soon as he was gone Alisdair dropped his feet and took hold of his mug with relief- a worthy trade for doing as Arthur told him.

‘God, I need a bath.’ Patrick, disregarding his tongue and self preservation, chugged half of his still scalding tea in the first sip and smacked his lips in satisfaction.

‘Not a shower?’

‘I thought I smelt wet dog.’

Patrick flicked Sean, ‘No, a bath. A long hot one.’

‘Oh don’t do that.’ Rhys looked at him in alarm, finally sitting up properly, ‘You’ll use all of the hot water.’

‘But my feet.’

‘It’s not fair on the rest of us...’

‘My feet don’t hurt at all.’

‘North, I swear I’ll kick you back out into the rain in a minute.’

Arthur returned with his own tea and a round bellied biscuit barrel, which he placed upon the table only for a second before it was commandeered by Sean.

‘Oi, come sit down,’ Alisdair pushed Patrick over to make room on the sofa, patting the space for Arthur to sit, ‘You’re making me tired stood there like that.’

Arthur wrinkled his nose, ‘I’m muddy.’

‘We’re all muddy; your sofas are fucked, you might as well relax on them and enjoy it before they need cleaning.’

‘I hate you all,’ Arthur said, but he sat anyway, grabbing a blanket to throw over their laps and leaning his head back.

There was a rare, peaceful, five minutes.

Patrick settled his head on Alisdair’s shoulder, ‘Bagsie not me sharing a room with Rhys.’

‘Bagsie not.’ Sean added quickly.

Alisdair groaned and Arthur patted his knee, ‘You could have had the sofa but you’ve muddied it.’

‘I could always kip with you.’

‘You can piss off.’

-----

Rhys gave a wounded pout and tucked the biscuit barrel out of reach by the bookcase, ‘My snoring isn’t that bad.’

Day 30

Full Masterlist

AN:

And that’s a wrap! Thank you for joining me on my Whumptober adventures, I’ll write up a masterlist of all of the prompts and then I’m going to put this month from my mind for a long while hahaha

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oumaheroes · 2 years

Text

Protective

Day 23 of Whumptober

Characters: Scotland, England, Wales

Day 22

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‘You need to go careful.’

A woman caught Alba on his way out, hand at his elbow from behind a home to direct him out of sight. She was old, perhaps around forty, and when she looked upon him Alba saw confusion in her expression. Her gaze flicked from eye to eye, searching for something.

‘Those boys outside,’ she said eventually, still looking slightly confused as if she expected something different, ‘be careful of them.’

‘What?’ Even straightening up as much as he could go, Alba only reached her collarbone and so stepped back to level them, ‘What do you mean?’

The woman glanced to the entrance of the settlement. Down near the base of the mound Alba’s brothers waited for him, the cough in Cymru’s chest keeping him from walking all the way up to trade the clothes he’d made and whose exchange of shoes were now slung over Alba’s back.

‘They’re not right,’ she said turning to him again, ‘Something is odd about them; the fae have them, or bore them. They may try to trick you.’

‘That’s untrue.’

‘I’ve seen them, we all have. The younger one here this morning- his eyes are not human. Too old for such a young face, too watchful. Mind yourself, if you are trading with them.’

‘We are the same.’

Alba waited for recognition to show on her face, the understanding that showed that she knew who he was. What he was, that he was the land and the hills and the sky and her.

It never came. Instead she clucked at him with a motherly concern, reaching out to cup his cheek without knowing why she did so, why she felt such care for this child who was not hers.

‘You are brave or foolish to travel with them,’ she said, ‘They may be abandoned babes from the Romans in the south and who knows what ills they bring with them.’

Alba jerked his head away, ‘Don’t speak of what you don’t know about,’ he told her, ‘you show your stupidity.’

The woman laughed. It was light and unconcerned, as if she were just talking to a stubborn child and Alba...

Alba panicked.

He turned away without another word and left, bag bouncing on his back as he quickly went down the wooden steps to the bottom, something uneasy nipping at his heels. He found his brothers by the brook where he left them, Cymru watching with -eyes closed- under a tree as Albion waded amongst the smooth grey stones in the water, hand darting out to try and catch the quick silver fish that investigated his toes.

‘Come on,’ Alba told them as soon as he arrived, ‘Let’s go.’

‘What about dinner?’ Albion didn’t look up, half crouched in the water with trousers up around his knees.

Alba strode over and dragged him backwards by the collar to drop him on the grassy bank, ignoring his cry of surprise and frustrated attempts to retaliate, ‘Now.’

‘Anything wrong?’ Cymru sat up and rubbed at his eyes, coughing into his fist.

‘There’s to be bad weather,’ Alba began to gather up their things, shoes and drinking cups lazily scattered about making him irritated more than he knew he logically should be, ‘We’re going to go north.’

Cymru looked to the clear, sunny sky but stood and said nothing, shushing Albion when he argued and fussed.

As they made their way north, through craggy mountains that collected clouds like clothes to where the land swept down to form great lochs, Alba tried to remember the last time a human had looked upon him and called him by his true name. When they had last spoken to him like they had once spoken to Mama, with love and gratitude and the fear of something smaller looking up at something bigger. When the south had still felt like home, when he’d been able to read the histories of the tribes from the east in the hills and know their lives.

Not for a mortal’s lifetime. Maybe more.

The fae whispered of change and Alba dreamt of a life apart.

Day 24

Full Masterlist

#aph scotland #aph england #aph wales #hws scotland #hws england #hws wales #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #hws british isles #hetalia #aph #hws #heroes writes #whumptober #whumptober 2022 #whumptalia

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oumaheroes · 2 years

Note

Any HC on the very first death of British brothers? I HC Scotland’s one having something to do with the Romans.

Ériu

Cymru

Albion

----

Alba

Alba first dies when he is too young.

Mama’s there but Cymru is not and Albion is not even an idea, that small fleeting time at the now faded start when it is just him, Mama, and Ériu across the cold sea. They move across the waters and between their lands often, Mama muttering as she goes when she feels the lands and people change beneath and around her. They chatter to her willingly and easily in return, their languages splitting and growing further apart each year but still recognisably hers. Open arms and gifts of honoured welcome, an unspoken recognition for her place in their world.

Sometimes she goes alone, when the crossing is too difficult or the tribes require more of her than she can give with children clinging to her clothes, but often she takes them with her. Alba taken to Ériu, Ériu taken to see Alba- carefully maintaining the link between them.

It is a journey Alba likes to make. He enjoys the shifting feeling of leaving his land only to return to it later, enjoys the feeling of being amongst culture different but similar, familiar but ‘other’. Mama in all of her parts, a collection of peoples bound by something he was born too late to witness but which connects him to his family like a branch to a tree.

It is one night as they make the crossing, the seas around them black and still with stars, that Mama first talks to them about their future with death, ‘Do not worry,’ she says after she finishes explaining, ‘I will be right there with you when it happens, the first thing you will see when you open your eyes.’

She was not.

Later, Alba will think of this promise. Will think about how it was too large for her to make and hurt too much when it was broken. Asks himself why she had made it at all, when she must have known that their time together was limited. Despite all of this he promises it himself anyway, to Cymru and Albion when they come and after Mama is gone. Swears it quietly into cupped hands which he turns to release into the night sky, so the hurt breaks only him if he fails.

‘Humans die,’ Mama had said, ‘When they get too old or ill. It is their way of things. And it is our way to follow them there, and then wake to live again for the rest.’

She had pulled them close in her lap, willowy arms securely wrapping around them both and her body warm at their backs, ‘But it will hurt just the same. Will feel just the same. And that is why I will be there.’

--.

It happens, in part, because of war.

‘Be good,’ Mama tells him, smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead in farewell, ‘the seas are too rough to take you and I cannot wait until they calm.’

Tribes are fighting on Ériu’s side of the sea. A king failing in his promises, a push for resources that wasn’t being resolved; the pressure building to something larger that demanded change. Mama could not fix it, was not supposed to fix it, but she needed to be there and watch things unfold anyway.

She leaves him in a village by the coast, the people touching his shoulders like a charm as he passes to wave her off from the hill, her small collection of boats like ants in the storm. It grows stronger overnight and by the next day the waters of the local river have swelled to a grey, rushing torrent, even though the rain remains only as a slight drizzle.

Mama won’t be back for a while. To get across the sea even in good weather takes time and until history frees her, she will stay there with Ériu. Alba hopes she will bring him back with her when she returns.

He must guard over their people whilst she is gone. He is responsible to watch and remember their lives in her place and, antsy to ensure his duties are fulfilled, Alba goes off to seek out the damage the storm has left behind as soon as it is safe to do so.

He disappears over the hill and down to the forest, following the trails of animals and their hunters to seek out some of his favourite spaces: a glade they camp in when Mama wants privacy, a cave further beyond which opens like a maw to gape bleakly into nothingness, and a fat, ancient tree whose roots curl and buck from the soil. Then a solid circle of stones that rests further inland, the air around them thrumming and thick as they guard something that even Mama is too young to clearly remember.

All seems as well as before, no damage to anything he deems meaningful in this particular part of their world. His feet itch to take him further north but he hesitates. Mama will hopefully only be away for a few weeks. He should stay nearby where she left him and help the people there, who will feed and clothe him in return.

The land feels oddly empty without her. Like it is lifeless, something of its usual vibrancy taken away. But then, he notices how it feels more settled close around him. How the people seem to look at him in a different light, the details of their lives easier to grasp in his mind. They are theirs; his.

This is what he is thinking of, when he comes across the lamb.

He only hears it because it bleats pitifully just as he passes overhead. It had toppled off the bank and down onto a newly made ledge, the earth having caved in with the rain and the waters of the swollen river below. It is small and young, maybe only a few months old, and it weakly churns the mud with its front hooves as it tries to climb back up.

There is no one else around, neither sheep nor person.

The ledge it is on looks fragile, the water battering up its sides threatening to wash it away and Alba knows he does not have much time if he wishes to save it.

Without thinking he slides down, fingers deep into the soil to slow him. He lands safely, feet planted in the weak muddy ledge with a good grip on the sides to keep him steady, but his sudden appearance startles the lamb and as he reaches out to grab it, it bolts. In one last burst of desperation, it leaps up the mud wall before falling back, its eyes wide and white. Alba lunges out to catch it as it falls, reflexes overriding sense, and his feet slip. The lamb is forgotten; his hand meets nothing but air and he topples.

He can swim but this does not matter; the cold of the water makes him gasp in shock. It floods him, filling his lungs and mouth and eyes as his chest and heart scream for air. His world is dark, the merciless current twisting him downbefore pounding over and around rocks and, as a minute goes by, everything grows darker still.

--.

Their people fish him out by the mouth of the river.

He was caught on debris, so he overhears later on, his clothing twisted into branches and pinning him in place. It is only this which saved him from being washed out to sea and the mere idea of what could have been makes his heart beat faster in panic. An endless cycle of waking and dying, waking and dying. He does not want to think about how long this could have gone on for, does not want to think about how big the sea is and how small creatures such as he can be swallowed whole inside it.

The people from the village recognised him only by his colours, his heavy cloak made of the vibrant plaid Mama weaves to mark their family as distinct snagged and loud amongst the ruins of trees, and they carried his bloated body wrapped in it back to the village to lay before a fire and wait.

Coming back from death, he finds, is just as bad as dying itself.

Maybe, it is worse.

To die is to hurt, but at least the pain has an end. There is a comforting nothingness that waits for you, an instant stop to the pain which grows to become a yearned relief, rather than a fear. But to return to life again the pain only grows brighter the longer you are there to feel it. Nerves and senses slowly returning, registering their decay with a flash of feeling that burns from the inside out. Skin must regrow and shrink to fit, organs must shed their sludge of death and reform, and bones must fuse back to where they belonged- all too fast to be natural, too slow to be ignored.

Alba screams when his lungs let him, takes in the air he has missed and arches his unbroken back for a noise he doesn’t recognise as his own. Hands clumsy, arms like wood- his body is unlike itself and will not obey him, will not listen to logic that it is safe, it is warm again and alive. His consciousness returns as soon as his flesh can maintain life but he wishes it wouldn’t, wishes that it would leave him be until all is fixed and well again and he doesn’t need to experience the agony of existing.

‘We must hurt like them,’ Mama always said, ‘We must hurt like humans to know and understand them and their pains.’

Humans do not know this. Humans do not feel this.

Humans live or they die, there is not this in-between trap for them, baited by life only to be tormented by the pain of living. The people of the village clutch at him desperately, clucking in sympathy or panic and smoothing their shaking hands over his fevered skin. Cover him in damp cloths to cool him, then bundle him again when his temperature plummets after he is spent.

He lays weak for days, a shell of himself. People watch him with worried, anxious eyes, cautiously keeping their distance apart from the elder women who hold him in their arms and force broth down his throat.

Maybe they fear what this means. Maybe they fear Mama, or him. Perhaps they see this incident as a sign of the future, a consequence from a causation. Alba doesn’t quite understand the relationship he has with them, not yet. Isn’t sure exactly how they see him, or Mama. She has explained but mere words do not satisfy him when all he has is innate feeling, cannot apply words to explain something so woven amongst his soul.

After a few days, he is himself once more.

The fever dies down, his body moves without protest, and his head begins to clear. Although better, he stays close to the village and does not leave their people again, even when the river gentles and the summer sun shines down hot and bright.

They are happy to have him, relieved that he moves and talks and breathes as before. Satisfied, they come closer to touch his arm when they leave to hunt and wave him near to help work their metals or shape the clay.

Mama returns, a leaf of ships on the horizon.

Ériu is by her side, a wide grin on his face when he catches sight of Alba where he stands amongst the throng of people who gather to greet them by the shore.

Mama spots him and swoops down, peppering his face with kisses and lifting him into her arms.

‘Hello, my sweet one,’ she says, fingering a carefully restitched tear in his cloak, ‘What havoc have you wrought this time?’

The crowd stills.

Mama looks about at the eyes that avert away from hers, and then back to him. There must be the ghost of something in his expression, a shadow of death that lingers in the lines of his mouth and under his eyes because her eyes grow guilty and sad.

He looks down, hands tight in the folds of her tunic.

‘Oh,’ she says and drops to crouch before him, settling him steady on the ground, ‘oh, my love.’

Hot tears fill his eyes and he presses his face into her shoulder, a dam he hadn’t known he was carrying finally breaking open.

‘At least it is done now,’ she says and rubs his back. Carefully but firmly, she pushes him away from her and holds his chin steady, wiping tears that spill down his cheeks with her thumb. She smiles but it is tight, her own eyes are wet and she swallows before speaking, ‘Our people are watching. Do not cry. It is done.’

--.

As soon as Cymru can walk, Alba takes him to swim. Sits with him in the shallows until he is ready and then holds him as he floats further out, small fists gripped tight to Alba’s fingers as his feet lift off the floor. Alba pushes past his own fears to join him, forcing himself out to where the water is almost above his head to make Cymru to swim to him for rest. He needs to know that he can, needs to know that Cymru can do it alone and he does not stop until he is sure, even when Cymru cries to be let out again.

He does the same for Albion years after, the same water that goes over Albion’s head now coming only to Alba’s waist. He is more impatient than Cymru was, more insistent, and he pushes Alba away as much as he reaches for him again.

Mama says nothing about these trips, even if Alba takes them when she is there. She turns her head away and busies herself, hands working quickly without pause even if Albion tugs at her to make Alba stop.

After she is gone Alba finds him alone there sometimes, staring out across the bodies of large lakes and endless seas- out to Ériu’s lands or the unknown south. Alba does not take them across to see their brother’s people as much as Mama did, the dark deep waves making his stomach knot with cold, but Albion seems to hunger for them in a way that makes Alba uncomfortable.

He takes to pushing him in or picking him up to throw him bodily into water, catching him always by surprise. Cymru tuts at him and Ériu laughs as Albion coughs and splutters below, but Alba watches. Watches how strongly Albion can swim back again, watches how he always comes straight up for air no matter how deep he goes under. How he knows to float on his back to regain his breath, how he immediately sheds his heavy cloak in the winter to lighten him.

How, no matter in what way Alba surprises him, he always comes back up. He does not panic, does not lose control. Does not gasp.

Alba watches as Cymru helps him out and warms him and ignores Albion’s shouts and insults to push past Ériu to continue onwards. Ériu’s eyes are far too understanding for Alba’s liking, far too old for his young face and Alba says nothing to explain himself.

He still says nothing when the younger ones come even later. When Albion, grown tall with his own collection of drownings about him like a belt gives Alba a single, sharp nod across their heads as America runs off barefoot without caution towards the shore, as later Australia climbs trees that dangle over rivers. Alba says nothing as he stands in pools of cold water with them until they cry to be let out, New Zealand angrily kicking his stomach or Canada balefully treading water until his chin begins to slip under.

Does it again and again and again until they can all swim to shore no matter how far Alba drags them in, no matter how deep they go. Will continue to do it as they age and America grows more reckless, Australia more inquisitive; will push or throw when they least expect it, will stand silently by and watch how they right themselves until he is sure, sure as he can be that there is no more that can be done.

He does the same when North comes. Avoids the warm, modern indoor pools and instead takes him to rivers and lakes to dunk him. Ignores the eyes of the human parents as North shouts to be allowed to go home, that he is cold and tired.

‘You might be cold and tired,’ Alba snaps at him once, ‘but you’re not dead.’

There must be an old bite of fear to his words. Something raw, something primal. There must be, because North looks away immediately and never complains again.

#aph scotland #hws scotland #aph brit bros #aph uk bros #aph british isles #hws british isles #heroes writes #heroes answers #heroes wips #historical hetalia #hetalia #aph #hws

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oumaheroes · 2 years

Text

Enough is Enough

Day 19 of Whumptober

Knees buckling/ Repeatedly passing out/ Head lolling

Characters: England, Scotland

Day 18

----

Scotland remembers walking.

Step by step, each one growing heavier, he’d moved south, where the pulse of disease first came to him in a fever ache that had dragged him conscious in the early hours of one morning. It had sat with him softly at first, a light coating of discomfort and heat until eventually he had no choice to acknowledge the sweeping arm of it through his population, people dropping one after another till whole villages were cleared as his temperature rose in response.

The plague. The pestilence. Worse than anything he’d ever seen before.

He had avoided it himself for a long time. Somehow, amongst his dying and dead in his cities, he himself had remained unaffected. He felt it only through his people, carried their fever to bed with him and awoke to their whispered last breaths in his ear but at first the miasma didn’t touch him. And then it did.

He has died so many times. In Glasgow in Edinburgh, in the villages and hamlets in between- a never ending need to wander through it all he fell on roads and against walls, left to rot or bundled onto carts to be buried if found when the buboes grew too large and his thirst too great.

He last remembers walking.

No direction, no purpose. Just to see perhaps. Observe what was left for closure or catch the survivors for hope. He fell- maybe. It was darkening, sky spreading purple behind dark clouds and he had stopped to rest... had he? Or had he fallen, in a town, on a bridge.

Now he wakes to a fire, something under his head. A shape before the flames, huddled and familiar, and his cloak over his chest.

England is taller than when he last saw him. Limbs willowy as he stretches to add more wood to the flames, fingers long and out of proportion to the thinness of his wrists. Gangly, more bone than meat, with a shadow of something grown in the sunken lines of his cheeks.

Scotland closes his eyes and opens them to morning. Under his arm it itches, a swelling newly popped or newly growing- he doesn’t know anymore. He moves to push himself up and hands force him back down.

‘Stop it’, his brother’s voice is still young.

His head is lifted onto something soft, a cup is held to his lips and he drinks, greedily and without restraint, until the water is gone and he is left still wanting.

England lets him go and leaves before returning with an apple, red and newly plucked.

‘The harvests are rotting,’ he says, placing the apple in Scotland’s hand, ‘They’re everywhere. Can you eat?’

He can’t. His stomach recoils to think of it.

He blinks and then it is raining.

They are under the thick canopy of a forest, backs to a tree, and his feet hurt. He doesn’t know how he got here, doesn’t know if he managed to walk here himself or if England dragged him but there England sits, next to him and holding his hand. Scotland’s skin burns, a raging pain that makes him want to claw his skin off. He chokes down a scream and throws his head back, a smack against bark that hurts more than it should and he wonders, distantly, how many times he’s already done this.

England squeezes his hand and says nothing.

Then it is sunny again.

Scotland wakes, on his stomach, his face resting on a bag that is not his, and wonders what on earth has happened to him. He feels better, feels heavier with the stiffness of death and knows that the disease has finally left him for now.

Rolling to his side with a wince he finds England sat close by, wood and knife in hand and shavings curling at his feet.

‘I felt you come across the border,’ England says without looking up.

‘That’s not your land.’

‘Not yours, either.’

Scotland doesn’t answer. He shifts forwards with a grimace, needing to crack his joints but not yet having the strength or energy to do so.

‘You’ve had it?’

England nods. His face looks tired, mortal.

‘Rhys?’

England hesitates, then nods again. Scotland wonders where Wales is, whether England has actually seen him at all. Whether he can, whether he even wants to.

He doesn’t want to ask.

The land he sits on is his, and it is not. It is a confusing area, sometimes pushing him back and sometimes drawing him in. It used to all be his, theirs- all Mama. Now newly ancient borders score into the soil with blood from both sides and neither of them feel at home here. He would have thought that if it’s not either of their peoples’ then it could be both, like it had been before. But that’s a child’s way of thinking and nations are not children for long.

He’s not seen either England or Wales in about a decade. Maybe more.

‘They think it’s the air,’ England tells him quietly, setting down his knife. He’s making a bowl, deep and practical but there are delicate carvings on the base, small marks Scotland used to help him paint on his skin in blue paint. ‘I felt you here and thought I should tell you; I assume your doctors don’t know.’

Scotland nods, ‘They know.’ A pause, an expectation. He lays back down, ‘no need for you to be here now.’

England scowls and looks away. Shrugs, ‘No, there isn’t.’

He is gone when Scotland next wakes.

Day 20

Full Masterlist

#aph england #aph scotland #hws england #hws scotland #hetalia #aph #hws #whumptober #whumptalia #whumptober 2022 #heroes writes #aph brit bros #aph uk bro #hws british isles #historical hetalia

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