la reinette pense trop

Shropshire, near the Welsh border, 1605

“Are you sure this is necessary?” Arthur gripes as they secure his hands behind the stake. With chains, this time, instead of rope.

“Shut up, devil-whore.” The man spits, yanking the chain tighter than necessary.

“Look you already killed me once and you know it doesn’t work.”

The man shudders, as if remembering Arthur sitting back up after being mauled by the dogs they’d set on him. The bastards had clawed one of his best shirts.

The man shuts his eyes and vows as if praying. “The Lord’s vengeance shall soon be upon thee.”

“I’m just saying that I’m the third witch you’ve killed this year. Don’t you think you might be getting a little paranoid?” His new king is fanatical about the witches and daemons supposedly plaguing his kingdom.[1]

“It is our duty as servants of God,” the man says solemnly. “To weed out evil where we find it.”

“The last one you burnt just because her neighbour’s vines died.”

“Death unto death,” he whimpers.

“Look I just don’t want you wasting all this wood.”

“God have mercy on your soul.”

“Oh, very well,” England tests the give of the chains and the thick wooden stake creaks under his nation strength but does not snap. The pile of wood under his feet is insufficient for a proper burn, which means he’ll likely smoulder and choke to death.

“I suppose you should get on with it then.” He suggests helpfully.

The fellow staggers backwards, muttering under his breath, and the vicar steps towards him with a lit torch. Arthur’s nostrils flare at the smell of smoke and his hands instinctively clench and tug again at his bindings. He restrains the urge to flinch during the vicar’s sermon every time he brandishes the spitting torch close to the kindling. He should go to death with dignity at least. But it’s almost impossible not to track the movement of the flame with his eyes.

The vicar touches the torch to the kindling and, as he’d thought, it smoulders. The wood is too green, cut down in eager haste. The acrid smoke stings his eyes and burns his throat. He tiptoes as much as he can as the heat steadily builds, and his whole body instinctively fights the bindings with the desperation of a snared rabbit as flames slowly start to lick upwards. Is this how she’d felt?

THUMP.

England looks down and sees the arrow impaled in his heart. A quick merciful kill. He only has a moment to be grateful before his consciousness slips away into the cool, shallow pool of half-death.

---

Arthur wakes up to a cool, dark room and a splitting headache. Voices murmur downstairs in what Arthur guesses is a public house, which means he must be in the next town over at least. A chair is pulled up beside the bed, as if someone had been watching over him, but the occupant is nowhere to be seen. A longbow and a quiver of arrows is propped up in the corner.

The sheets feel stifling and he’s soaked through with sweat where the healing processes of his body have generated immense heat. His soul is back, but he waits for the rest of his body to catch up.

His fingers and toes gain pinpricks of feeling as blood rushes back into the tiny capillaries. His stomach gurgles horribly as his digestive system grinds back to life, and he tastes metal in the back of his mouth from acid pooled in his throat. His diaphragm pings like a bowstring as it settles back into place. He tests his smoked lungs and throat, humming a hoarse tune into the room.

The door opens mid-tune and Wales bustles into the room backwards, carrying a bowl and cup in his hands and kicking the door shut. His hair is longer than when England last saw him, dark and curly and loosely tied back. When he turns, he has a moustache and pointed beard in the current court fashion.[2] He is dressed for the road in a dark doublet, with sensible ribbons at his knees securing the ends of his trousers to prevent draft. A pair of worn leather gloves have been abandoned on the foot of the bed.

“Oh, good you’re awake. I thought I heard you.”

Dylan insists that he came up with the melody, whistled between them over centuries of campfires and journeys across rolling plains.

His brother sets the bowl and cup down on the small bedside table and Arthur smells some kind of pottage with lentils and peas. He’s suddenly so hungry it hurts so he tries to sit, kicking back the sweat-sodden bedlinens.

“Easy,” Dylan murmurs. He helps Arthur up and hands him the bowl and a spoon. Arthur takes it and lifts the spoon to his lips with shaking hands and manages to get about half of the spoonful in his mouth.

“Thank you,” he croaks with his new throat after a few bites when he can think straight again. He glances pointedly over at the bow and arrows resting innocuously in the corner and thinks of curling flames and grey smoke.

Dylan pretends not to see it and makes him drink the cup of hot water with verjuice and honey. “It’s not much. You’re lucky I found us a room.”

Dylan is the best marksman of them all whether his weapon is a bow or a matchlock musket. The arrow through Arthur’s heart had been a perfect shot, carefully and precisely delivered. There was no luck involved.

“It’s good.”

His brother grunts to accept the veiled compliment. He settles on the edge of the bed. England’s hand has stilled its incessant trembling as the food settles in his belly and Wales fusses and taps his hand to remind him eat slower. There’s a faint crash and someone cheers downstairs. Wales gently brushes a spider away as it crawls over the bedsheets. There's dozens of them up in the rafters, recently hatched.

“How did you end up on a bonfire anyway?” Dylan finally asks.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur counters evasively.

“Delivering the king’s messages. Now you.”

Arthur shrugs. “Cursed their well.”

His brother rolls his eyes. “And why’d you do that?”

“For a laugh.”

“Arthur.”

“So that they’d have to go to the marshes for water.”

Wales frowns. “What? Why?”

England sighs and sets down his empty bowl. “For Ginny Greenteeth.”[3]

“You didn’t bargain with her, did you?”

“Not on purpose!”

“What do you mean not on purpose?”

 Arthur shrugs defensively, eyes darting anywhere but Dylan’s searching gaze. For a second Dylan can see a much younger boy squirming out of consequences for his mischief.

“I took something from the marsh.”

Dylan pinches the bridge of his nose. “You took something from faerie waters and didn’t think that might constitute some sort of bargain?”

“I didn’t know it was her marsh. She used to be further north.”

“What even was it?”

England mutters something unintelligible under his breath.

“Put your teeth back in.”

“A brooch.” Arthur says louder.

“A brooch?”

“Not just any brooch!”

Wales growls. “No, no don’t say it. You nearly got yourself burned over a piece of faerie jewellery?”

Arthur shrinks because Dylan’s anger is scarier than Alasdair’s for its rarity. “It’s manmade,” he ventures.

“Oh hag’s teeth Arthur!” Dylan cuffs him across the head. “I’ve met magpies less covetous.”

Arthur frowns and eats another spoonful of pottage to avoid replying, too embarrassed to admit the truth about the bog. And anyway, it was hardly true. He’d met magpies with far more egregious aspirations of wealth.

“What did you curse the well with?”

“Pig’s blood in the water.”

Wales makes a face. “You might be the first witch burnt to actually deserve it. I should have left you up there.”

England doesn’t feel particularly apologetic towards the people who had tried to kill him twice over, so he just slurps the dregs of his bowl obnoxiously.

“You should remove the curse,” Dylan says with a tone of reprimand—like one of the king’s bench judges. Wales has served justices before—he has the right level mind and sense of equity for it.

Arthur wipes his chin and puts the empty bowl down. “I’d owe Greenteeth then.”

“You got yourself into this mess you can get yourself out of it. Just give the brooch back.”

England blanches. “I’m not giving the brooch back.”

“What could be so special about some damn brooch?”

He shrugs again, refusing to meet his brother’s eyes. It’s part self-consciousness and part exhaustion, as the meal after his overnight resurrection has left him sleepy and warm.

Wales brother sighs and shoves him over. “Rest more. I’ll chew you out properly in the morning.”

---

Under the cover of night Arthur dresses and sneaks back to the village. He undoes the curse on the well, scuffing over his hidden curse-marks on the bottom of the bucket. It’ll give fresh clean water in the morning, and the parishioners will congratulate themselves for having burnt the right person.

What had been his house has been picked clean floor to ceiling. England reaches up and brushes his hand over the rafters over his bed. There, concealed from prying eyes, is the gold and red enamel brooch he’d taken from Greenteeth. He thumbs the trefoil patterns as he sneaks back to the inn Wales had taken him to and climbs back into bed as slowly as he can. Dylan snorts and rolls in his sleep but does not wake. Arthur sleeps with the brooch clutched to his chest.

---

“This is what you took from the marsh?” Dylan gapes, dropping his spoon into his porridge with a wet splat.

Arthur scuffs the toe of his boot under the table, looking down into his oats. “If you don’t want it, I can just give it back.” He reaches for the brooch to take it out of Dylan's hands but his brother snatches it away.

“What do you mean, give it back? This is my brooch you know.” Wales says indignantly but his eyes are gentle.

England shrugs, embarrassed. “I thought you might miss it.”

“I haven’t seen this in centuries.” Wales reverently turns the brooch over in his hands, feeling the pin tip for sharpness. “It looks the same as it did the day it went in.”

“You dropped it?”

Dylan nods absently. “I was carrying you, I think. You’d gotten an infection in your foot, and you didn’t want to walk.”

He pins it to his doublet. It looks completely out of place against the new fashion. But it makes Wales look a touch more how England remembers his earliest memories of him.

“I recognised it when I saw it,” he says.

Wales brushes a thumb over it. “I’m surprised you remember it. You would have only been little.”

There’s an unspoken truce between them. Siblinghood comes at the price of justice. Wales had lost his laws, his kings, and his sovereignty at the hands of England’s Plantagenets. Who in turn were not really England’s Plantagenets at all but descendants of France’s wayward nobility. Arthur can’t give Dylan his kingdom back. All they can do is remember and maintain the act of brotherliness. Dylan is a better man in that way than Arthur is, who still wants to tear Francis’ throat out even though his kings have not been French for a long time.

For now, at least, Arthur is away from court and Dylan, as a king’s messenger on the border between England and Wales, is closer to the crown than he is. In a year’s time it may change, and trouble is brewing around the crown’s anti-Catholic stance.[4]

“So…you’re happy to see it?” Arthur fishes for approval in a way he’d never admit to in front of his European allies and enemies.

His older brother grins. “Well let’s see if we can offer Greenteeth something else.”

---

“No.” The green hag sneers. “I’ll drown you.”

“You haven’t even considered it.” Wales replies in old Welsh and waves the brass belt buckle at her.

“I don’t want your new trinkets. I want that,” a long spindly finger reaches for them from the ragged edge of her brown cloak dripping with slime and bladderworts. Greenteeth points stubbornly at the gleaming brooch affixed to Dylan’s chest. “Back.”

“It’s not even yours,” Dylan plants his hands on his hips.

“Is mine!” She cries indignantly, spitting a fragment of broken mossy tooth in rage. “Is mine and the Wessex boy took it.” She splashes the stagnant black water around her at them, glaring at Arthur.

“I dropped it and Arthur returned it to me. That’s only fair.”

Greenteeth grumbles. “Dropped it so long ago.”

“I could say there is a dirwy due for not telling me when I dropped it.”[5]

Greenteeth licks her teeth, weighing her options against the grave charge of concealment. “Give me something else.”

Wales makes a show of turning the buckle over in his hands and considering it. “Something else?”

“Yes.”

Dylan reaches for Arthur’s ear and pulls out the golden hook through his ear lobe.

“Oi!”

Dylan shushes him and presents the earring to Greenteeth, and her yellow eyes light up with curiosity.

“Dylan,” England growls. “That was a gift from Portugal.”

“Hear that Greenteeth? This is all the way from Lusitania.”

Greenteeth blinks like a frog and turns the earring over in her hands, shaking it so that the enamel starburst jangles in the low grey light.

“Do we have a deal?” My brooch for the earring?”

Greenteeth peers suspiciously up at Wales. “They’re a pair. Both earrings.”

“Deal,” his brother says happily.

“Dylan!” Arthur says indignantly again, but his brother elbows him hard then smiles beatifically at him when he grunts.

“Give her the damn earring.”

Arthur reluctantly hands it over, mourning the loss of Portuguese gold. Greenteeth snatches it and cups the jewellery in her hands, stroking over the delicate enamel work. 

“And—” Dylan reaches into their shared bag between them and pulls out a handful of baby spiders, scuttling and rolling over his hands like smoke at the sudden low light. “These. Just a few bites and your teeth will be as white as milk.”

“Like milk?” Greenteeth murmurs covetously, reaching out for the handful of baby spiders.

“By oak, ash, and thorn,” England swears solemnly.

Greenteeth stuffs the spiders into her mouth and rolls them around, chewing and making a face around globs of black spittle.

“Well?”

Greenteeth swallows and grins hopefully at him, showing a row of mossy crumbling teeth and chewed up spiders’ legs wedged between them.

“You’ll make the queen of fairies herself jealous,” Wales says.

Satisfied, Greenteeth thrusts her hand out and crunches another mouthful of spiders when Arthur hands them over.

“We have a wedd?”[6]

Greenteeth hums and nods. “I will spare you this time, green sons of Brutus.”

Shrewsbury town, Shropshire, 2026

Portugal raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Spiders?”

“Spiders.” England affirms solemnly.

The other sighs and stirs his coffee with the pink spoon provided by the trendy Danish café they’d dived into to escape the rain. He sips it, makes a face, then tears open two packets of sugar and dumps them in.

“So, am I out of trouble?” Arthur aims for light-hearted but even to his own ears it lands as a spurned husband hoping his wife will let him back in the house for dinner after staying out too late.

Gabriel’s lips pull up slightly around the rim of the coffee cup. “You’re forgiven, though I have a bone to pick with Dylan now.”

“Be my guest,” Arthur exhales, happy to be out of the line of fire.

They sit in comfortable silence, listening to the bustle of the café and the baby babbling at the table next to them and watching the rain slide down the window.

Gabriel frowns as if having recalled something and swallows the mouthful of pastry he’d been chewing pensively. “And what about that ring I gave you—the one with the carnelian? Cost a fortune. You’d better have that at least still?”

The ring is deep in the caves of the Peak District with one of the pixies who had demanded a toll fare for Arthur to leave the faerie circle he’d carelessly stepped into. To break one ring, you must gift another.

Arthur clears his throat. “Well. You see…”

Historical notes

[1] Referring to King James I (VI of Scotland), who actually wrote his own book ‘Daemonologie’, which endorsed the witch-hunting craze.

[2] i.e. the Stuarts. The fashion in the seventeenth century tended towards fuller facial hair and pointed beards.

[3] A grindylow hag-figure from English (particularly the Shropshire/Cheshire/Lancashire counties) folklore who pulled unsuspecting victims under the water in bogs and marshes.

[4] In November of the year this fic is set the Gunpowder Plot will be attempted and Guy Fawkes discovered as one of the co-conspirators. Soon after that, England will establish its first North American colonies, fundamentally changing Arthur’s place in the world and in his relationships.

[5] Dirwy – a fine (Welsh).

so for In this universal river I have Arthur and Luciano first meeting around the 1740s. Wales makes a comment in chapter 21 about Arthur and Gabriel spending six months in the colonies together and before that, in chapter 19, Gabriel invites Arthur to meet his colonies and sail together when they have time. The voyage itself doesn't show in the story, I might make a side fic later on, but I didn't want to introduce a bunch of people and not do anything with them, you know?

It's a pretty widespread headcanon in latin hetalia that Arthur is Luciano's godfather, given his friendship with Port, and it's super normal to call your godfather/godmother just that. In Portuguese we say padrinho/madrinha, in my region we also say dindo/dinda. It replaces the customary tio/tia (uncle/aunt) that we use to call any blood-related uncles/aunts or adults when we are children.

I think Luciano still calls Arthur godfather all the time. When he's super angry at him he calls him Mr. Kirkland and Arthur immediately knows something's wrong because he's also not used to Luciano calling him anything other than godfather. He has the softest spot for Port's kids. Given the alliance, Arthur and the British Navy had a pretty liberal use of all Portuguese ports and did most of their protection against foreign attacks. When there were attacks in Macau and Cape Verde, it was the British that protected them, during the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, the British occupied Portuguese India to protect it from the French (and then were invited to leave lol). Most British colonies were set up near Portuguese colonies because the Portuguese colonies were used as bases for the British Navy. This is an Empire that was built on the back for this friendship alliance, knowing that as long as Portugal remained unconquered by Spain and France, Britain could use their overseas territories as it pretty much wished without fear of competition. So to Arthur, Gabriel's kids were like nieces and nephews, they were not his own, but he was familiar with them enough to meddle in their lives and enjoy their company.

I don't think Arthur and Gabriel know what exactly their relationship is lol they're just good friends, pals. Bermuda and Barbados clocked them right away, but Alfred still lives in denial land. Matt knows something is up between them, but he doesn't want to say anything before Arthur does, it's not his business. The other Caribbeans and Guyana distrust Gabriel because of the trade (rightfully so) and they don't care much about him (although Jamaica likes Luciano ❤️). Every other kid that came after the Treaty of Paris and afterwards only heard stories of their friendship and how it fell apart. They have Portuguese colonies for neighbors and some are their friends, but as they see what Arthur's and Gabriel's relationship has become in the 1890s they mostly feel like Gabriel is a stranger to them at best.

Gabriel thinks fondly of the older kids, but he is guarded around the youngest since he thinks they could always launch attacks to annex his colonies, which in turn makes him treat his own kids badly. He might only have met New Zealand during WW2, yeah, but I don't think he would have been particularly happy then. Portugal knew they couldn't fight off the Axis' powers if they decided to take its colonies and so they tried to stay staunchly neutral, despite still allowing the British to (mostly) freely use their ports. When Australian forces entered Timor Leste and the Japanese not only used that as an excuse to invade but also take the country, Gabriel would've been pissed.

Nowadays I think they are friendlier around each other. They are not friends per se, I think Gabriel's role is a lot more "my dad's friend", and I think they'd have been surprised to learn they are romantically involved lol which amuses Bermuda to no end.

Thank you for the ask!!!! I love talking about this!! And I'm sorry for rambling!!

Arthur swallowed, sucked a breath in through his nose. Swallowed again. Nodded.

There was something dark crawling up his spine and down his legs, something suspiciously like dread — but Kiku’s fingertips still felt like they were burning a trail on his chest as he leaned away and sat back on his own his seat. When he smiled at Arthur again, the mask was back in place, the curve of his lips placid like the lakeshore.

His words, however, his eyes—

“Perhaps it’s time for me to take you home.”

---

There was sex, of course, when they reached “home.”

Kiku’s hands on his shoulders, digging in and pushing down so hard he felt like he was nailed to the tatami floor beneath him. His teeth, a singing counterpoint, tracing lightly, almost tenderly down the lines of his neck, nipping gently at each juncture. Arthur could push him off, could struggle (would have, had this been any one of his many other lovers — had it been Francis) but every crash of Kiku's hips into his made his body tense with pleasure, the warmth of his breath on his skin, the way his dark hair fell over his face and was just starting to cling to his jaw with sweat, the way his voice was lilted, so so quiet, when he mouthed his name—

Arthur.

It made him weak.

He’s too late. She’s lit the flare. In the dark, formless under the clothes and blankets, she might have not been noticed, but in the sick light of the flare, green as gas, there’s no mistaking her form, a girl’s form even in the trousers of the men’s field uniform, permitted this near the front with the medical officers. They were supposed to be safe here, three trenches back. There’s a joyful German noise and then the swell of bodies. Not a trench raid, not a squad. This is a counter-offensive. Matt throws one into another’s bayonet, and Jack breaks another German’s neck without thinking. The world is lit in green light reflecting from the gore.

He kills three men in seconds, Matt even more. But they’re replaced. This is no trench raid. It is a punch right through the line, a blow puncturing right through the armour of the front line. Jack takes up one of the rifles, but it won’t fire. He swings it into another man’s face. Where the fuck is his gun? Where the fuck is Matt’s? 

“Zee! Go!” Matt bellows. Jack spun and watched his sister’s face. There’s German blood there, splattered across her jaw and cheeks, her hand red, a knife that is not hers dripping. 

“Go!” Jack says and bodily shoves her back at the ladder. “Find Dad!” 

Her eyes flash with the knowledge that this is the only way to avoid the worst, but also full of loathing. She hates him, and maybe Matt, for making her go. 

“Go with her,” Matt tells him. Gripping him by the sleeve and shoving him as hard as he can. “Go!” 

“Matt!” 

“Go!” 

He’s got a German rifle to his shoulder and is already flipping back the lever and aiming. He looked up, and he was horrific in this light, face sharp, eyes narrow, lip curled back. But a flash of Matt, of peacetime. “I can slip away if they capture me. You can’t! Go!” 

“He’s right!” Zee whispered. “Come on!” 

“No!” Jack wrenched his arm free of Matt. They’re surrounded by his soldiers. Australians are to their left and their right flanks, awake now and fighting. Their souls come to his awareness like stars as the sun sets. Pinpricks of light he can’t leave. Too much is happening. “No! Stop!” 

“Jack, Go!” Matt’s firing, and something is screaming in the distance. Five bullets, then four. “I’m right behind you.” Four bullets left, more screaming. The trenches around them are coming alive. He won’t leave them. He can’t.

 But Zee’s got him by the arm and is dragging him with her.

“You know what happens if we stay!” Zee whispered. Three bullets become two. Hoarse shouts. She gripped him by the face, her own grey with terror, but her brown eyes set with certainty. She has all of Dad’s decisiveness. “What happens if I stay,” 

And just like that, she’s straightened his thoughts. He won’t let Germans have her, and she won’t leave him here. So they go. They have to go. 

“Okay,” He exhales his panic and shakes his entire body. “Okay.” 

Matt has fired twice more. He’s out of bullets, and more are coming, more are coming now. His sister tugged him back. He snatched up his sidearm, forgotten on the floor in the mêlée. 

“Be quick and be safe!” Matt tells them. It’s a benediction as hoarse as his prayers are when he thinks there is no one around to hear him. They’re just as futile, too. The time their slaughter brought them is at a standstill, and Matthew’s bullets are gone. 

“Find Alfred!” Matt screams over his shoulder as if he’s on another German. The last thing Jack sees of him is the full horrific brutality of his Matt in hand to hand. The filth of his fight. Matt was a brutal bastard. He thrust his fingers into an enemy’s face, finding eyeballs for leverage and twisting heads, viscous as a wolf just before spring. Matthew gives Germans a fight the way he gave their father before Jack was born, and that’s before his fingers close around the pine of his favourite axe. Jack turns, hearing Zee say his name. Their artillery is waking now. He can hear the guns open up. They have to go.

Zee was just ahead of him, running headlong into the dark. It’s wrong. Leaving his men. But she’s ahead of him. It’s the way the world works. Zee sailed into a new day ahead of him on their spinning planet. He follows. A German must have crawled past Matt. Jack shoots.

Zee jumped, startled, and for a fucking moment, he thought his wee Kiwi-bird of a sister, flightless and round, was going to sprout wings and fly straight home to New Zealand. But she’s repeating his name, and he’s staring into the dark, eyes swimming with the gun flash, wondering if hell is a different sort of red from home, with all its bright baked clay. Zee took his hand, her bloodied fingers around his, and looked at him. He grabbed her and hauled her along, forcing her to keep up with him despite their height, as he has their entire lives, from the moment she toddled into existence and he was taller.

He can trace her in the dark as she zigzags through the bullets and is lit by the odd shell in the sky as they escape into the night. He never lets go of her, making her steps longer when her weight hasn’t completely shifted. She is not alone. He is not alone. 

They slip into the night, into chaos, into darkness, and further back into the line. Jack trips when a floodlight opens on them, temporarily blind as Zee hauls him to his feet. Everywhere, everything is chaos. Horns honking on trucks they only see when their lanterns appear from nowhere upon soldiers firing up the ignitions, officers and enlisted men shouting. American rifles being broken out from their boxes, sleeping soldiers on rest, still dreaming as they take distributed weapons. The trenches give way to tents, and tents give way to the depots. Still, Zee pulls him along. 

“Where—” Jack asked, panting. “Where the fuck are we going, Zee?” 

“Alfred!” She huffed, breathless, like that was obvious. But he had wanted father first and figured she would, too. 

“Why?” 

“Father will prioritize defending the front line.”

“So?” 

“So— Alfred understands defense in depth. Give up the first line easily, then they pay for driving in deep, using the salients for killing zones. The more warning he has, the more of his and ours that man those salients, the more of theirs will die.” 

He swallowed. He hated it when she sounded like Dad. 

“Like Ypres before Matt took the high ground. Guns on three sides,”

“Exactly,” Zee replied. She had picked up a lantern at some point, and as she raised it, her eyes, always more brown than green, glinted for a moment with father’s thrilled, satisfied cunning. “We make them pay.” 

They stumble through the night, guided by the sensations of a nation so like and unlike them. They are flavours of the night jars that encircle the Pacific. They fly; they’re so much larger than their father. Matt, cold and clinging to the top of the world, his back against Alfred, with even more people. Then, Jack was warm and all alone in the Pacific in his early years. But the Tasman Sea is Zee’s hand on his elbow. He loves her so much, and he hates his father, and he hates Matt for making them go and both of them for being right and for being practical. He collapsed into the early morning grass off the road, nearly taking Zee down with him. Soldiers yelled, and more traffic roared in his ears.

“Jack?” Zee tugged him to a stop. “Jack, mate. Hey.” 

He couldn’t quite seem to get his breath, and he barely avoided puking all over her as he sprawled to the side and vomited what felt like everything he’d ever eaten since stepping foot in France. 

Zee made a sympathetic sort of sound, and he felt her arms around her. It’s his soldiers behind them now. He can feel hers a little, too, on the flanks and Father’s, but his own are fighting, and he is running, and he has killed again. Again. And not for the last time. What’s his count? Can he add those to his count? Matt does. Zee counts hers against the lives she saved, and now she cradles his head, gently taking him by the jaw to make him look at her. Her eyes are hers now, and it’s not her father’s words in her mouth, not his will or his brutal practicality. 

“Jack,” she said, and he squeezed her, clamping his arms around her smaller body like he had when he was little, and she was all he had of home in frigid England. “Jack, Christ.” 

“I’m sorry,” He said but didn’t let go. She squirmed, not escaping but looking up at him. “I’m sorry,”

“Look at me,” she said, and he finally lifted his eyes to her. “Thirty-six thousand.” 

“What?” 

“That’s how many you evacuated from ANZAC cove. You. Not father, not me. You and your generals planned and executed that. Your balance is still positive, do you understand me?” 

“Kiwi-bird,” He said because he was trying to argue, because she could read his mind sometimes, and he didn’t want her to, not now. He wanted to get up and move again and pretend he’d thrown up his sins with his stomach’s contents. “Don’t.” 

“Thirty-six thousand.” She said again. 

“Those weren’t directly... that kind of number is different from the ones you put back together on the table, Zee. It’s not the same. It’s not the same and it’s blood and it’s so much blood.”

“Look at me!” She said, this time harsh and sharp. “We do these things together, right? That’s what we said. My balance is your balance. You watch my back, I cover your arse.” 

“Where the fuck was that cover when I got shot in the bum at Lone Pine, eh?” Jack shot back out of spite. But then she snorted so hard he thought she might puke, too.

“It’s not my fault it’s so bloody big!” She said. “You got the birthing hips, mate.”

“You are such an arsehole.” He countered, giving his side a rub where it most certainly did not round out into berthing hips. Then he was serious. “You mean it?”

“Heart and soul, dick.” She offered him a hand up, and he let her swing him to his feet. “Your balance is my balance.” 

“Except at the commissary.” Jack huffed, unsure why that was the thought that popped into his head. “They won’t let me buy oranges anymore.” 

“Correct. I trust you with my life and my immortal soul, but not the money.” 

They push through the busy roads of new refugees and even more soldiers towards the pull of their father and the pull of whatever Alfred is, still half a stranger. It takes Zee pulling a “Do you know who my father is?” to some Oxbridge-educated fuck she might have rubbed elbows with in her school years to get them through the guard and into the command tent, and a damn good thing she did or Jack was ready to take out British soldiers like he had German. Arthur and Alfred are together, already half aware, and Father looks relieved, openly so. Not a good sign. Alfred looks bewildered. Less empire than boy startled out of bed. Because he still tends to sleep in one of those, even now. Because he is precious and held in reserve. Zee explains what happened and what needs to happen next. Jack fills in details as they go. His soldiers are the brunt just at that moment, and his heart is banging away in his chest when Alfred rolls around on him, full of piss. Looming because he does have two inches and an empire on Jack.

“You LEFT him?” He demanded, one fist gripping Jack’s collar. “You left Matt? What the fuck is wrong with you!” 

“He can get away!” Zee said, trying to wedge herself in between, struggling as much with their father’s grasp as Jack was with Alfred’s. “Matt’s been doing this for years. He’ll be fine! We had bigger things to worry about!” 

“Get the fuck off me!” Jack could do nothing about Alfred’s hold. His struggle was useless.

“Like what!” Alfred practically shouted. “What’s more important than making sure Matt gets home in one piece?” 

“Like the entire western front, you dumb cunt!” Zee shoves her face up at Alfred’s, willing to argue even if she is a foot shorter. 

“Enough!” Arthur slammed his hands down on the map-laden table and tugged Zee away, shoving one arm between Alfred’s chest and Jack’s, curling so he was in front of her. But he couldn’t break the grip Alfred had on Jack’s collar. “Get your hands off your brother, boy!” 

“Fuck you!” That was all Alfred had to say to Arthur. Zee was tugging her arm back from their father and freeing herself. 

“You left him there!” Alfred rounded on Jack again, closing the distance he already commanded with the grip on his collar. 

“You always do this!” Alfred tossed back at Arthur. “You always leave him to do your dirty work. No one watching Matt’s back because why would anyone watch his back! Why would anyone give a shit except about how much killing you need done! Why should anyone watch his back?” 

“I was!” Jack was on his toes, the angle of Alfred’s fist the only thing keeping him from using his jacket as a hangman’s rope. He didn’t care. “I was here, watching his back while you were home turning a fucking profit! We were here when it was all for nothing! You only showed up for what? For what? To take credit? Aunt Bridgie always said you were brave, that you were brilliant. She forgot to mention what a bastard you are!

“You shut your mouth. I’m not the one who just abandonded Mattie.” 

“Ah, my dear boy, but you did that first.”

One sentence. One sentence, and that’s all it took. Father looked unbothered. Alfred’s hand dropped like he’d been slapped. Jack fell back, and Zee was there, throwing off Dad’s grip and under his arm in a moment. The room was silent. Jack breathed hard. He would have probably swayed if Zee wasn’t so close, half shielding her body from Alfred, half shielding his sanity from the shouting.

“Want another first?” Alfred wasn’t facing them now. This was an argument older than both of them, conducted in shouts muffled from the other end of the house. “I took his head off his shoulders at Yorktown. I shot our dear lord father’s jaw from his fucking skull and his skull from his shoulders and the lobsterbacks surrendered. And then they left. And when the gutters overflowed, you were born.” 

Zee’s hand tightened on his, squeezing, squeezing like when the hospital ship she’d been on went down, torpedoed by that kraut bastard, and he’d dragged her corpse off a beach, and the only sign of life she could give him was the vice of her hand on his. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true. 

Arthur exhaled a laugh. “Goodness, I read you lot too much Shakespeare. Such a flare for drama, children.” 

Alfred’s face twisted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Who’s us?” Zee countered. Jack wanted to throw up again. “What’s wrong with you? You two are the kraut fuckers, not us!” Father looked almost as shocked as Alfred. “Matt wouldn’t even be out there if someone hadn’t made mess! And it wasn’t us!” 

The conversation had meandered, shot right from under them, from under Matt. Fuck.

“All right!” Dad intervened like he’d had the same thought. Hard and sharp like the furious fifties that marked the sea voyage home when Jack was small, he cut through the tension. “As flattered as your brother would be to see you defending what little of his honour he hasn’t left in a brothel, I rather think we should get to the task of finding him first, no? And perhaps, if you lot can manage more than one task at a time with the single wit I seem to have left you to inherit, we could perhaps even turn back what looks to be an entire German offensive that’s just caught us with our cocks out.” He paused and glanced at Zee. “Barring you, dear girl.” 

Jack snorted so hard they almost toppled over. Alfred sighed like a martyr. A sigh to make him sound like Matt, if there ever was one, and leaned over the table. “Where’d you put your favourite knife this time, you old bastard?” 

“Excuse you,” A note of laughter in a gravelly voice, still half-ruined by gas. “I am Father’s best knife. Only the finest for when the Krauts come for dinner, eh Dad?”

It was a pile-on, everyone rushing to get an arm around him. If Zee was his rock, the rest of them needed fucking mortar to stick together. Jack nearly elbowed Dad in the face as Arthur tried to look at a particularly large blood stain oozing from Matt’s shoulder but had to settle for turning his cheek and looking him in the eye a moment before he and Zee nearly got bowled over entirely by Alfred rocketing through. He practically picked Matt up. 

“Let me down, for Christ’s sake.” Matt laughed. “I’ve got Gilbert brains on my shirt, bud, fuck.” But Alfred would do nothing but grip him and shake his head. He might have muttered idiot. Jack didn’t hear. Matt was looking over the Yank’s overly broad shoulders, nodding at them both with a wan sort of smile that said as much of pride as it did blood loss. Zee’s hand was on his shoulder, and he glanced at her.

“You want me to slip some arsenic his coffee?” Zee whispered, not doing half as good a job suppressing her grin as she thought she was. “They burn it so bad. It could be proper strong. Nice and quick like the cholera.” Her sense of humour was morbid like that, even if he wasn’t entirely sure it was humour.

“Naw,” Jack drawled. “Reckon I’d’ve taken it some kind of personal too if someone had left you out for the Krauts.”

He got an affectionate punch in the kidneys and a squeeze for his trouble.