#bonding?

Their destination was beyond the city centre, so they gawked and gossiped and exchanged quiet grumbles in their own language about the smell, the heat of the sun, and of England itself. Rhys himself did his best to not say much at all. Crossing through the drawbridge was an ordeal in and of itself, as recent rainfall and the bridge’s sheer mass had turned it into a dam, quickening the current under them. When the boat’s English captain had told them to hold on tight while he prepared to “shoot the bridge”, the assembled nobles had exchanged hesitant glances, shuffling to the rails or one of the small masts to find purchase.

Rhys had been at the bow, too occupied with the effort of figuring out how so many buildings and people had stuffed themselves into—and over— the confines of one bridge. When they lurched down through the raised drawbridge, Rhys did not fall, but his head whipped back around to look, wishing they’d not been moving so fast so he could gawk some more.

Comfortable in castles, the Welshman felt exposed when they at last alighted in Greenwich. The shiny new palace the late English King had rebuilt there was close to the river and not at all fortified, which made Rhys’ heart burn with envy. Oh, to spend his coffers in safety, to enjoy wide muntin windows and elaborate gates in place of arrow loops set into stone walls.

Was that what he might have, someday?

There were, of course, plenty of formalities upon their reception at the palace, and Rhys was able to go through the expected motions without really thinking, mind absorbed by the palace’s opulence, resentment growing slowly in his belly. At length, however, their hosts arrived. The King was not present on account of his poor health, but his new wife—his sixth, the poor thing—was there with various other ministers that Rhys had read about and cursed in their appropriate turns.

He tried to focus on what they were saying, in case he was addressed, but instead his heart raced as he scanned the assembled English crowd, royals and nobles and ministers and staff. He assumed the size of the crowd was meant to be intimidating, but it only provided him with a human underbrush to hunt through to find the face he was looking for, the one he knew would be there, because his letter had said so.

Even knowing exactly what he was looking for, Rhys still did a double take when he finally spotted Arthur, who was already looking directly at him with those shrewd, grass-green eyes. He was taller than last Rhys had seen him, and looked utterly different with combed hair and rich fabrics in place of battle filth and chainmail. He should have been unrecognizable, but in an ambush of emotion, Rhys saw Arthur not as he’d recently known him, but a taller, sterner vision of the fae-kissed baby brother he’d lost eons ago.

“—inally meet you in person, Sir Bowen,” someone was saying, and it wasn’t until Arthur flicked his eyes away that Rhys realized they’d been speaking to him. He disliked his Anglicized surname and hadn’t recognized it.

“Yes, your majesty,” he fixed his gaze and inclined his head to the queen. He was glad he was speaking to her and not her husband, for if it had been Henry he didn’t think he'd be able to finish his expected line: “The honor is entirely mine.”

The formal welcome was soon done, and once the queen was escorted away, the crowd dispersed. Only a few nobles lingered while the higher-ranking staff came forward to show their guests to their rooms. Rhys looked immediately for Arthur, but only caught a glimpse of the blond’s retreating form as he slipped around a corner. Rhys began to pursue, but was stopped by a well-dressed servant before he could stray too far.

“I can show you to your rooms, sir,” said the young boy, clearly desperate to do his job well. Rhys looked up at the empty doorway and then back to the boy.

“Yes, thank you,” he said distractedly. His accent was audible even to his own ear after listening to all the English chatter. “Lead the way.” Rhys followed the servant, tossing looks back over his shoulder as he was led farther into the Palace, in the opposite direction of his estranged brother.

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Whoever had arranged the seating for the welcome feast had either never dealt with Nations in their life, or had worked with them so often that they knew exactly what they were doing, for Arthur looked just as shocked as Rhys when he realized they would be sat next to each other. Though the English and Welsh entourages were seated mostly separate from each other, Rhys and Arthurs’ places at the table were, apparently, symbolic of the Acts that had brought Rhys down the Thames in the first place.

It was an uncomfortable start to the evening, for sure. Rhys tried not to feel too offended when Arthur downed his first glass of wine in three large gulps, for he would’ve done the exact same if he weren’t expected to put on a show of being docile .

“Arthur,” he said eventually, and his brother actually flinched. “It’s…” he struggled with what to say. There were a million curses and demands that burned the back of his throat, but his tongue felt less Wales and more Rhys now that he was close enough to see the last bits of baby fat clinging to Arthur’s angling jaw. “It’s good to see you without a sword in your hand.”

Arthur looked quietly surprised at the earnest tone, and his expressive eyebrows twitched in confusion, eyeing Rhys as if waiting for him to finish with an insult. When he did not, he looked awkwardly back at his plate, taking another drink of wine—a sip this time instead of a gulp.

“Yes, well,” the Englishman said, and Rhys was amused to realize he wasn’t the only one sporting an accent. He’d noticed some odd happenings in the English language in recent decades, but Arthur’s pronunciations were even more distinct than those of his countrymen. “I’m glad I don’t have to swing a sword at you, anymore.”

Rhys wouldn’t lie, that bruised his pride. Traveling all the way to London to celebrate his complete assimilation into Arthur’s Kingdom was hardly something he relished. But it wasn’t as though he hadn’t had a few grim centuries to see it coming. Above the ocean of resentment, anger, desperation, and grief that would, perhaps, never drain from his heart, the topcurrent of the day was one of relief. He’d killed and been killed in too many rebellions, too many uprisings, suffered under too many Marcher lords with no peace and no voice to speak up for himself or his people. This, at least, would give him that.

“And I’m glad I won’t have anymore fucking Marcher despots to swing a sword at,” he retorted, and to his surprise, Arthur choked on his drink. After recovering, Arthur looked over at his brother with an unexpected measure of camaraderie.

“You know,” he said in a low voice, and it was the first time in half a century Rhys had seen Arthur smile, even if it was just a tiny thing. “I never liked them, either. They’ve all been pricks, the lot of them.” That made Rhys snort out a laugh, which he quickly muffled—the humans weren’t yet drunk enough to stop them spying on their immortal companions.

“Not enough to stop dear old William,” Rhys countered. Arthur looked acutely offended.

“You think I got along with that man?” Rhys snorted into his wine, because he knew Arthur had not.

“I have to assume he made the decision before you even halfway knew how to speak French—or he English,” Rhys teased. He was surprised when Arthur blushed and had no response. Rhys set down his wine glass with a clunk. “God’s bones, Arthur, he did?”

“I told you I didn’t like him,” Arthur grumbled, scowling to hide his embarrassment.

“Well I knew that, but…” He felt an insult on his tongue and Arthur was glaring at him, but looking at face of the boy—no, grown man—sat next to him, Rhys suddenly remembered his fragile position here. “Well anyway,” He demurred, turning back to his meal. “I’m glad they’ll be no more. I imagine your King can breathe easier now,” Rhys finished. Arthur looked over at him, eyes studying him carefully.

“ Our King,” he corrected.

Rhys’ sip of wine turned bitter in his mouth. He held it on his tongue anyway, for when he swallowed, he would have to speak, and did not trust himself. At length, he drank it down, tongue burning.

“Yes,” he had to agree, because it was true, and had been for centuries now, even though he’d only recently agreed to accept it. Arthur seemed pleased with himself as he took a bite of roast boar, and Rhys busied himself with tasting the bread and looking about the room so he wouldn’t have to look at his brother’s dumb, smug face.

“Well,” Arthur said eventually, drawing Rhys’ attention back to his dining companion, “He is one of yours, you know.” Rhys was surprised by such an olive branch, but was also not willing to be placated just yet.

“His ancestors were mine,” it was Rhys turn to correct his brother, “This fellow is well and truly yours.”

“Well, yes, but—” Arthur seemed to flounder, uncharacteristic of him in recent centuries. “After Bosworth, I thought—I was hopeful that maybe…” Arthur looked up at him, and Rhys could not help the anger that lived in his eyes, but when Arthur saw it, the blond wilted slightly, and rather than glare back he looked away. “I don’t want to fight with you, Rhys,” he admitted.

It was the first time Arthur had called him by his name in a long time, and Rhys’s heart seized. It was a rich sentiment indeed coming from England himself, but God damn him to hell without hope for purgatory, Rhys felt guilty.

Arthur was the sort of person who would fight anyone, he had been since birth. He’d fought with his mother, his brothers, his entire extended family, he’d once bitten a finger off of Rome. Rhys was fairly sure Arthur would fight God himself if he ever had the nerve to come back down to Earth. Even now, Arthur was fighting with Alisdair and Francis and Brighid and the Pope and anyone else who might’ve looked at him wrong, and Rhys had never felt bad for hating him for it. But, seeing him here and now, facing newfound adulthood won through nonstop war, Arthur looked immensely lonely.

It had just been the two of them, back before Rome. Rhys had held Arthur as a baby when their mother couldn’t—or wouldn’t—care for either of them. He’d bounced him on his knee and held his hands while he learned to walk, telling him stories that wove myth and history together in indelible knots. Rhys had been idealistically determined to be a better brother than their older siblings, who seemed to enjoy killing each other for sport. He taught Arthur how to speak with the fae, where to find dragons and sprites in the woods. He’d even taught Arthur some of the magic he knew, back when Arthur was still willing to listen.

Then Rome had come to hunt them both. He’d found Rhys first, and his armies were too large for Rhys to repel with his magic. Rhys had told Arthur to run, and they didn’t see each other for a long time, until they dragged Arthur kicking and screaming to Londinium. He’d often cried into Rhys’ shirt in those days, when he was locked away, confined to his rooms or deprived of dinner, often after he’d taken a beating. Rome had always punished Arthur with more cruelty than he had Rhys; Romulus had always known Arthur was the greater threat. Everyone had. Their mother had seen it, Rome had seen it. Even Alisdair had seen it, warning Rhys in a rare moment of brotherly care after Ælfred had pushed the Danes away. Rhys had been young and lonely himself in those centuries, clinging on to the coddled, pleasant version of Arthur that lived in his memory even as the Saxons pressed him west past their island’s spine. Rhys had been as desperate as any of them, longing to have a companion against the dark. It had been foolish of him, and he would always regret his own naivety.

Still, even after Arthur demanded his submission at the tip of a sword, it had been them two, together. Arthur’s kings trampled Rhys into the mud and immediately after drafted him into a century of war. But it had been Rhys’ own suggestion that he teach Arthur to hold a yew bow. He taught him to shoot as well as the Welshmen his armies had subjugated, and still remembers Arthur’s boyish enthusiasm for archery with a smile. Through plague, through war, through infighting and mad kings and more death than either of them had ever expected to see packed into so few centuries, they’d been stuck in it together. Rhys certainly hadn’t asked to be there at his brothers’ side, and had many, many times attempted to leave, but he had been there, in the end. Arthur had taken much from him, and was sure to demand immeasurably more in years to come.

And yet.

Looking at Arthur’s confused, frustrated, lonely expression, Rhys felt older than he was, and sadder for Arthur’s sake than he knew he had any obligation to be.

“I don’t want to fight either,” he said, though part of him always would. He stared down at his dinner, whole body aching with a profound longing, a heartbreaking, bone-deep kind of homesickness he could not describe because the home had never truly existed. He longed for a time when they were both young, when their shared island was just magic and forests and stars that they could share. He couldn’t remember if that world had ever existed, but he knew it never would again.

Beside him, Arthur raised his glass towards Rhys.

“To one kingdom,” Arthur said, and he probably thought it a generous concession to say kingdom rather than England. Rhys studied his brother’s face, so incredibly young but grown into the man who Rome had foreseen and feared. Rhys mourned the brother he’d never had, but hoped, in some indomitable foolishness, to find whatever peace he could with the brother he did.

“To you and I,” he toasted instead. Arthur’s expression twitched, but in the end, his eyes softened slightly and he tapped his glass against his brother’s.

“To you and I.”

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Historical notes:

1. ‘Hewitt’ is the welsh term for what is called a mountain in England, that is, a hill above 2,000 feet high (~600m) with a prominence of at least 98 feet (30m). ‘Llyn’ is the Welsh word for loch.

2. The Marches were a series of fairly volatile territories between England and Wales. Appointed by the King of England, the lords of these lands were not legally territories of the Crown, and operated on their own laws, almost entirely independent of the English crown. Almost. It’s complicated, but just know these hosted many bloody conflicts between England and Wales, and have, I believe, the highest concentration of castles in all of Europe due to this wartorn history.

3. 1283 was the close of the Edwardian Conquest of Wales, the point at which Wales came well and truly under English control. In accordance with the stubborn and fiery Welsh spirit, plenty of uprisings would occur after this date, but to no avail.

4. It’s true! The first stone iteration of London Bridge (multiple timber iterations of the same had fallen with disastrous results in times past) was built with very narrow arches and broad feet, so water draining from upriver would get caught up at the bridge much like a dam. The river west of the bridge could be several feet higher than that on the other side, and sailing through the drawbridge at such a time was fairly dangerous. However, this act of “Shooting the bridge” was a necessary skill for navigating London’s waterways.

5.I’ve here named Wales as Rhys ab Owain. Ab Owain (lit. son of Owain). The English version of Owain is Owen, and the Welsh prefix “ab” smushed together with “Owen” becomes “Bowen”.

6. The aforementioned Marcher lords were appointed by William the Conqueror, a Norman (French) duke who rather famously invaded in 1066 and took over England, and spoke absolutely zero English when he ascended the throne. So you can understand Arthur’s distaste.

7. The Tudors (including the present king Henry VIII) were indeed descended of Welsh nobility, namely the Tudors of Penmynydd. The Tudors managed to find themselves kings of England after the male bloodlines of both the Lancasters and Yorks were ended in the Wars of the Roses, in which the Tudors fought on the side of the Lancasters.