Pale hands, thin and bony, wrapped in bandages bloodied and old touch a cheek just as pale and dirty, muddied. The touch was gentle but the other man flinched away, trembling and shaking, hands clenching and unclenching, dirty, jagged fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms.

“England…” the voice was soft, the accent lilting. Green eyes looked up into eyes just as green, just as shadowed, trembling, bloodied hands reaching up and clutching at the rough sleeve of a green military coat. “England it hurts… it hurts so much, England…”

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@sweet-devil-al

A hum on his lips, a hand in his, loose and lax, clawed fingers brushing against the back of his hands. It’s night and the moon is out from behind the clouds, the darkness thick and warm around them.

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Mirror, Mirror

There’s a pounding beneath his skin, vague and faint and unheard, dull and throbbing and never ending, just there beneath the surface. Centre of his chest and spreading outward, through his veins, his arteries, a taint through his blood, black as pitch and thick as the night.

The mirror was simple, wasn’t gilded or framed with patterns or intricate carvings worthy of the ages. He sighed and the glass was marred, his breath spreading in a fog that bled across the surface like the taint through his blood. Green eyes stared through the fog, dark and dull and tired. Too-long bangs in his eyes, he brushed them up and then wiped the receding fog with his hand, streaking the glass.

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@Earlgreywithcomplaints

An hour, a minute, a second.

How long has it been really? He wasn’t even sure. Too long, but at the same time, not long enough by the standards of whoever has him here, in this position.

Ribbons of thread, pearly white and invisible, not there but ever-present, wrap around him. In his mouth, pressing down on his tongue, gagging, can’t breathe, can’t talk, around his neck, frantic pulse, frantic heartbeat make it stop. Down his arms, unseen against the pallid flesh, and around his torso, between the ridges of his ribs, pressing, down, down, it hurts, it hurts. His legs together, held by more invisible rope, can’t move. 

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“I wonder though, what is it like to be bitten. People try and describe it in literature, but I can’t help but feel that it falls short.”
 
Gradual at first, building pressure just below his skin, sparks behind his eyes. His breath a whisper, hanging on the empty air, a mist of nervous anticipation, coiled nerves worn with repression and wonder and curiosity enough to kill.
 
Muscles lax, clawed hands roaming over the bony ridges of his back, sharp and soothing and deadly. The smell of blood surrounds them and suddenly his hands are red and sticky with sweat and memories, but he ignores. Always ignores, shoving them aside, grabbing the feeling of damp breath against his neck and pulling back to reality.
 
“There’s something…intimate about the biting…We certainly don’t fall for our victims, mind you…. Physically and mentally…and it only really hurts for a split second.”
 
Fingers curl into leather, comfortable, familiar, gripping tight. Straining white at the joints, shaking with effort of holding on, clinging. Staccato breaths, caught in his throat, anticipation building, building, under his skin, behind his eyes. Pounding heartbeat in his throat, blood in his ears, pulse below his skin.
 
There’s a moment’s pause, a moment’s breath, hitched and drawn, stretching longer and longer and shorter than a bare second. Everything is still, nothing moves. Green eyes widen and blue eyes close, breath hitching, hitching, catching in his chest, his throat and the words to stop are on his tongue where they shrivel up and wither, sliding back down his throat, halting the air that wasn’t flowing.
 
“Intimate… I’ve heard it described that way. I suppose it’s the vulnerability.”
 
Hands at his back, sharp and soothing, up and down, circles over the bones of his back, ridges of skin and bone and pale white skin. Another moment and a hush of parting paper flesh. The noises are quiet, obscene in the silence, hitching breaths and dying words mixed with dry gasps of air, fruitless mostly.
 
Fingers tighten over leather, comforting, still familiar and ever present, stagnant beneath his shaking, straining digits. He arches with the initial pain, chest to chest, he can feel his heart, beat beat beating against the other’s ribs, painful fast and desperate.
 
“Wait a minute…are you…wanting to see what it feels like, yourself?”
 
Clutching tighter, who? No one knows, just clutching, clutching desperate, contact presence, closer, closer, more. Fingers in leather, cloth and hair, everywhere, pressing closer, chest to chest, heart beat to non-existent heartbeat, heaving breaths and fluttering eyes.
 
“Curiosity kills the cat, as they say.” 
 
Eyes closed, he can feel it, hear it, blood through paper skin, vulgar and obscene and a blush rises high on his cheeks, lips open in an ‘o’ of confused euphoria, gasping air, dead air into desperate lungs, not enough, burning, burning.
 
He stutters, stumbles, dizzy, but it doesn’t stop, doesn’t end, pressing closer, still closer, still more. Can’t stop, won’t stop, blood through paper skin.
 
“Well…I don’t mind showing you”
 
Fingers lax, eyes fluttering, flutter closed, open, closed, and then it stops, everything stops and the moment comes back, there and endless, stretching on and on and filling nothing more than a second and he moves away.
 
“…If it wouldn’t be a bother.”
 
Dizzy, dizzy can’t stand up, slump against him, eyes closed and gasping for air, sweet on the tongue, dry and parched.
 
The scent of blood, everywhere between them around them, too many memories, hand slicked with sweat and imagined blood, not there, never there, paper skin smooth and clean and pale. Memories surface and nausea threatens, bile clawing, clawing up his throat and into his mouth and he can’t breathe for a moment.
 
“Just…uh…don’t move around to much, alright?”
 
Eyes, closed, sit in a chair, shaking like a leaf in the wind, blond hair long, too long, in his eyes, plastered to his face, cold and uncomfortable. Can’t brush it away because his hands are shaking, too bad, too much and everything is sore and yet there’s a craving, in the curve of his throat, rising and curling and coiling.
 
“I’ll try. No guarantees.”

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@Gilbecraycray

How had he ended up like this?
 
He didn’t know, and in all honesty he didn’t care.
 
He reached out slowly, dream-like, pressing slender fingers against the other’s lips; lips that so often spewed enough nonsense to make the irritation swell and swirl in the back of his head, gray and tender and dull.
 
He pressed him back against his chest, the bigger form compliant, willing and bending to his whim. His breathing quickened, hot damp spots on the other’s ear, in his hair, two fingers forcing between his lips and against the flat of his teeth, forcing them open to muffle the sounds.
 
What was he doing?
 
He didn’t know, and in all honesty he didn’t care.
 
The weight against his chest was comforting, his fingers wet. There was a knife in his hand, he was vaguely aware of that. His hand came up, pressing the blade into a throat, paler than his, even. He could feel the pulse through the blade, in his fingers, dull and rhythmic and comforting despite the context, despite what he was doing.
 
He moved the blade down under the bump of the other’s Adam’s apple, feeling the movements of the other’s swallow, riding them out and letting out a sigh, soft and steadying and shaky.
 
Why was he doing this?
 
He didn’t know, and in all honesty he didn’t care.
 
He pressed, up and in, through paper skin, thin and fragile. It opened like a whisper, a hush of blood over his fingers, warm and sticky and red. The smell was strong, pervasive, invasive, and he wanted to heave. His stomach knotted but he pressed harder, harder, pressing in, further in, blood over his fingers, rivulets, dark and red and hot, boiling rivers on his hand, down his wrist.
 
Drip, drip on the floor, he pulled the knife out, pulled his fingers out and the body collapsed at his feet. Blood on his fingers and he fell to his knees after it. Blood on his hand, run his hand tiredly across his face, through his hair, smell of blood and he’s going to throw up.
 
What now?
 
He didn’t know, and in all honesty he didn’t care.

@gentlemancharm

Mirror image identical, they’re the same; same eyes and hair and skin. Same suffocating stubbornness and yet different entities completely. He could only see whispers and shadows of himself in the other’s green eyes, vague, splintered images and faded mirages. He didn’t like it, never liked it, possibly never will. They get along well enough, cordial at best, nothing more nor less, but there’s the suffocating irritation that wells at the back of his head, colours his vision from black to red and back again. He can’t stand it, it makes his head pound and throb relentlessly every time.
 
Talking to himself was never something he could stand, really.
 
The weight in his hand is familiar, cool and heavy, pressed into the dip of his palm. His finger slipped through the guard, traced the trigger with a cool familiarity. His mouth was dry, nerves tingling, something grey and tender aching in the back of his head. It would be easy; he’s done this before. Faceless men, nameless, meaningless. Countless. His men, other men, enemies. He’s done it. This time isn’t different.
 
They’re face to face, eye to eye and the irritation swells and his lip almost curls. He controls it, forces it up in a sort of smile, not quite sickening but not quite normal, staccato breaths stuck in his throat until he forces it out. Minutes and words meld together until he’s not sure how much time they’ve been talking, meaningless chatter, idle and time wasting before the other turns away.
 
He’s a coward, breath hitching in his throat, fluid motions, arm up, gun pressed to the back of his doppelganger’s head, grip firm. His eyes are wide, breath staccato and uneven, he cocks the gun, safety back, finger on the trigger. Vision red, black at the edges, clouding, his head is hazy, unclear and the his finger tenses, pauses. Time freezes, endless seconds ticking past and he just stares, all muscles tense and neither move, frozen, breath harsh and shallow and rickety, hanging precariously on the edge before the silence crescendos around them and he pulls the trigger.
 
His arm snaps back and the irritation melts away, breathing harsh, evening slowly, slowly and his heart races in his ears, stuck up in his throat and his hand is warm with gunpowder. He turns away, fixes his tie, forcing back the bile clawing up his throat.

1812

“You do know… if this war is lost, you’ll cease to exist as a colony? You’ll just become part of him.” England’s voice was timid, hesitant, as if he had just uttered something that should not have been uttered.

The other male nodded, and England sighed, looking away. The other… had a face that wasn’t easy to look at for to long. At least not now.

“Oui, frére,“ he said in that soft tone of his, and England felt a rush of… of something. Not affection, certainly not. But some compulsion to keep the boy. Keep him safe. Keep him his. The wounds from losing his thirteen other colonies in the New World were still to raw and hurting to allow losing the last one. All he had here was Canada, the fourteenth colony. “Oui, frére aîné. Je sais.”

England nodded, clapping the younger male on the shoulder. “Good. At least you know.” He sighed, turning to look out the window, hands clasped behind his back.

“Frére?” the younger broke the silence after a moment or five, looking at the wall opposite instead of at the older. “Vous… vous m’aiderez, oui?”

England was quiet for a long moment, and then nodded, not turning away from the window. “Of course I will, lad. I can’t afford to lose you as well.” Of course not, his one foothold in the New World was not something he wanted to lose, and certainly not to… to him.

The colony nodded, smiling feebly, “Merci, monsieur Angleterre. Je ne veux pas devenir un américain.” His smile was as small and hesitant as his voice and England couldn’t help but smile in return.

“Je sais,” was all he said in return and the younger boy left.

—

“It’s been three days Canada. How long do you plan on letting those men stay here when every day another falls ill? He’s gone. To the other side of the St. Lawerence,” the elder said, sitting down across from the younger, timid male and averting his gaze to the fire in front of them.

“Oui. Je le sais. Mais… je ne lui veux pas gagner. Alors… alors je dois… je dois le faire…” the younger sighed. “Je ne veux pas… I don’t want to… to become American…” he stared at the elder imploringly. “Vous savez?”

England nodded, sighing softly and smiling gently. “Look at this, Matthew,” he said after a long pause, drawing the other’s attention to him if only for the use of his name.

“Quoi? Regarde-quoi?” he blinked, confused.

England gestured vaguely about them, smile turning softer as he regarded the colony. “Look around, Matthew. Everyone here, my men, your men… They’re all fighting for you. You’re not here because I’m your sovereign and you’re not here because you’re my colony. Right now, we’re truly, in a sense, equals, aren’t we?”

The younger man blinked and then smiled in that soft way of his, nodding. “Oui. Ègalité. Nous sommes égaux, maintenant, frére.”

Fear

Fear.

A funny word, an emotion England never understood. Not true fears, at least, the kind that shuts down your brain, adrenalin pumping through your system. True fight-or-flight mechanics that is the core of all living things. He’s never felt it, really.

How can he feel it, when he can’t really die? He knows that is something were to happen he’d just come back against when his body had finished healing? The feeling struck him as strange, since the majority of his existence people have been doing the stupidest things for fear of losing their own lives and he just couldn’t get it.

He’s died so often, stared down the barrel of a gun more times than he could count, seen things that would surely send tingles of fright, paralyse anyone with sense. But he can’t remember ever being afraid. Not for his life or his nation. He supposed that he may have, at one point, been afraid that he would indeed fall, become annexed into another country.

But those feelings are just distant figments of something that once was, something that he locked up in some inaccessible corner of his psyche.

Arthur was the one that was afraid.

Arthur was the one who was afraid to fall, to fail. He was the one that worried and fretted and pushed everyone away for fear of being rejected. Arthur was the one who wanted relationships, people to be able to fall back on.

England was the one who didn’t care. England was the one who didn’t feel the fear that Arthur did, didn’t feel anything that Arthur did. And as such, Arthur was the one that was always pushed to the back, when England realised he was too fragile, too easily hurt to be of any proper use to him.

England feels no fear; doesn’t understand feeling it.

Arthur feels it all; doesn’t understand not feeling it.