I don't know if I'll be updating any of my chaptered stories any time soon. That said, one-shots will arrive randomly. This is something of a related prequel to the FACE family series by catholicorprotestant. It gives some background to Arthur's family in that context, and fleshes out my own character, Ireland, aka Erin Kirkland. That said, I hope you all enjoy~
Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for Erin herself, and the names given to the other British Isles Siblings.
KEY:
Erin: Ireland
Allistair: Scotland
Dylan: Wales
Collin: Northern Ireland
Kristiana: Fem!Norway
I'm not doing any warnings this time. Yell at me if you so please, but unless said yelling is constructive, I ill ignore you.
Everything within the Kirkland family was governed by strict rules and routines. As the eldest, Erin had learned that quickly. The first two things she learned, were how to be quiet, and how to obey. Well, she learned well, she just never actually followed those rules. Despite being a wild, willful child, Erin came to realize two more things soon enough. Every four years, a new baby was born, and two years after that, the family would move to a different place. When she was four, Allistair was born; two years after that, they moved from the Republic of Ireland to Scotland. Once the new baby was born, Erin realized that she had more freedom. Strange thoughts for a four to six year old, but she had always felt the pressure to be more mature than her actual age.
When she was eight years old, another baby was born. The unspoken rule that every four years a baby would be born was established. Dylan looked much like his older brother and sister, but his red hair was wavier than anything, and had more of a brown tint to it than the bright red curls that Erin and Allistair shared. And, as always, the youngest boy had the bright emerald green Kirkland eyes. Two more years passed. The two oldest children bickered like cats and dogs, but as soon as Dylan showed up, they would back each other on anything and everything. Yet they came to love the child, as they were punished quite severely for doing anything nasty to him. The oldest sibling began to see things within their family more clearly, and she was not liking what she as seeing. Erin was ten years old when they moved to Wales.
It was a wet spring two years after that, when little Collin was born. Twelve year old Erin held him first of his siblings, then passed him off to eight year old Allistair. Four year old Dylan peered curiously at the babe, but was still too young to hold him. When the baby was given back to her, and the four of them were ushered out of their parents' bedroom, Erin wanted to say that she was surprised. She lied through her teeth, when Allistair asked why Mother and Father didn't take the baby back; she said that they were tired, and wanted to give them some time to bond with Collin as well. He was too young to remember that the same thing had been done with Dylan as well. Young or not, Erin still remembered being told to love and care for Allistair as well, and how very little attention their parents had actually ever paid him. Six years ago, she had thought that new babies meant more freedom for her.
Now she knew that they meant a different kind of cage.
But aside from her dawning realizations about her family – she'd stolen too many make-up items to hide the bruises gained from the smallest of mistakes – Erin was also growing up. And she very much doubted that her parents would ever approve of the person she was growing into. Appearance and presentation meant everything to their parents; she had learned that early on. As such, they had done everything they could to mold her into their ideal of the perfect daughter. She suspected that she received the most bruises because of how hard she rebelled against that ideal.
They wanted a pretty, well-mannered, obedient daughter. Erin only gave them one out of four. Pretty she had never wanted to be; she had chopped off her wild curls when she was eleven. The scars on her neck from where the knife had nicked her multiple times would always serve as a reminder that she would never be a porcelain doll like her parents wanted. Obedient was never a word in her vocabulary; Allistair, Dylan, and Collin had somehow managed to learn to be brats when their parents were gone, and perfect when the adults were around. Erin had never learned that, always willful and wild and never wanting to listen to people she was fast coming to hate. And a daughter? She was starting to think that maybe God had made a mistake, that his paintbrush had slipped, when she was born female. The fact that she was the most well-mannered boy in the house meant less than dirt to her parents.
Their family had always been governed by rules and tradition. It was a rule that babies were born four years apart. It was tradition that they moved to a new place two years after that baby was born. It was expected that Erin would mostly take care of and raise her younger brothers. It was normal that when she was sixteen, two years after they had moved to Northern Ireland, another baby was born. It was natural that this baby, like all the others, was going to have red hair and green eyes. When Arthur was born with blonde hair and green eyes, everything changed. They didn't wait two years, but moved to England immediately after the little one was born. They weren't allowed to meet the newest baby. Allistair, at twelve, didn't care; he was busy with his friends. Dylan had always been reclusive, though he got on with his siblings well enough; he was more interested in his books than any eight year old should have been. Four was too young to truly understand what was going on, but even little Collin could understand that something was amiss now. Their parents forbid Erin from taking care of Arthur, but she had never been one to listen to them.
For two years, she defied them at every turn. In two years, a different kind of love grew in her heart for the little child with hair like sunshine and a smile to match. She had come to love Arthur, not as her brother, but as the son she was quite sure she would never have. But that happiness wasn't meant to last. They day she turned eighteen, a rainy day in April, Erin was given an ultimatum by their parents. They had pulled strings, and had her accepted at Juilliard Academy of the Arts in New York. She would attend classes and make something of herself, rather than continue to be a disgrace to their family. She would not come home for any of the school breaks, and she would neither write, nor call, nor e-mail. She would sever all contact with the family, and she would be evaluated upon graduation of whether she would be allowed to reestablish contact with her brothers. If she refused, she would be disowned and thrown out onto the streets, with nothing but the clothes on her back and the money in her pocket.
Either way, she would more than likely never see her brothers – or Arthur – ever again.
Over the next for years, though her mind had little time to think of those she had effectively lost, Erin's heart remembered in painful detail. The classes were grueling, and the students were competitive and often nasty and underhanded in making sure they got ahead. The ache in her heart was only eased a little, when she met one of her fellow music students, Kristiana Steilsson. The Norwegian girl was her roommate for her third and fourth years, and the two couldn't have been more opposite. Erin was tall and rail-thin, with her short-cropped red curls and flashing emerald eyes. Kristiana was rather short, with fey curves and pin-straight platinum blonde hair falling to her waist, her eyes as blue and as cold as the North Sea. One was wild, and the other seemingly emotionless. One studied composition, and the other studied theory. One was brash, and the other calculating. One was brazen, and the other ladylike.
They seemed destined to hate each other. Then they met while both were on their way to the weekly GSA meeting. Their sexualities proved to be the doorway they had needed. Talking about how they had come to terms with their differences led to talking about their families. Erin learned that her beautiful roommate ha three half-sisters, two older and one younger. In turn, the redhead shared stories of her parents' abuse and neglect, and of how she had been the one to take the brunt of it. Kristiana had awkwardly but sincerely held and comforted her, when she had broken down and cried, unable to stand the thought of what her parents were doing to her brothers, but most of all, what they were likely doing to Arthur. Two months later, Erin had asked Kristiana out; by the time they graduated, they were engaged.
Unable to bear the thought of going home, and in her fiancée's case with no-one really to return to, the two women moved to Massachusetts shortly following graduation. Kristiana took a position teaching music at a middle school, and Erin gave private lessons in the tiny living room of their two-bedroom house. Making ends meet was never easy, but somehow they made do. Despite all of this, Erin never could bring herself to forget her family. Her heart ached when her lover received the occasional call or letter from her sisters, but never with jealousy, always with longing. When the laws were amended, and they could finally marry, the redhead nearly lost it. Seeing her wife's sisters arrive, and knowing that her own brothers would never even know what had become of her… For the second time since they had met seven years ago, Kristiana held the Irishwoman as she broke down, but this time there was no awkwardness between them.
Yet there was no rest for the wicked. Time seemed to pass more quickly than ever, though the ache in Erin's heart never eased. She called those that said time healed all wounds liars. They had been married five years, when Kristiana was offered a real teaching position at a boarding school in England. It had been fourteen years since Erin had been back to the UK, but she knew she wouldn't be finding her family. It had been too long; she was too afraid of how her little brothers had changed. She was too afraid of how much Arthur had changed. After all, if she had fought when their parents had forced her to leave, it wouldn't have only ruined her, it would have ripped their family apart. She didn't want to face the fact that she had made the coward's choice.
Kristiana came to Erin the moment she had realized who the boy in her classes with bright emerald green eyes was. She told her wife that he played exactly the way she did – with passion and pain, with fury and fear. But she also told the Irishwoman how the other children were cruel to him, and how she had heard from the other staff that he never went home during any school breaks. Erin knew right away, without even needing to see him. She had never known, and still did not know, why their parents had hated Arthur so much, but she knew what they were like even with the boys that were good. She understood that cruelty would have been the understatement of the century in how her baby brother – the boy she had loved like son – was treated by their parents. Still, she also knew that there was nothing she could do.
Despite all of this, there was still that ache inside of her. That ache to know the family she had lost, to meet the son that wasn't hers but that she had loved anyway. When searching for any of the other boys proved fruitless (doubtless they had each disappeared into the wilds of the lands they liked best), Erin set her sights on the brother that was the closest to home. Through Kristiana, she kept an eye on him as best she could, and one day when she wasn't booked with lessons from nine in the morning until nine in the evening, she came to the school. She told the administration that she was here to see her wife, but that she would also like to look around a bit. No questions were asked, thankfully, and Erin used the directions Kristiana had given her to find her way to the cafeteria.
Pausing in the doorway, breeze from the open windows billowing her red curls around her, she scanned the room for eyes the same color as her own and golden-blonde hair. The Irishwoman found Arthur quickly enough, but she also found the boys teasing him. Protectiveness surged like the tide and made her blood boil, but as it turned out, she had no need to run to her baby brother's defense. Ignoring the whisper of her mind that he was a brother she never knew, she watched the beautiful blonde with sapphire eyes save Arthur. It struck her then, that she had just witnessed the beginning of something beautiful for her brother. Erin had always been sharp, and often knew things about people and about situations before most people. This acuteness of perception told her that her time to come back for Arthur had ended. It was a bittersweet realization, as it meant that he didn't need her to save him, to love him anymore – if she had ever had the right to want to.
Erin knew Kristiana had come up beside her before the Norwegian woman she loved even said a word. She let her wife pull her into a quick, soft kiss, but her eyes never left the two blonde boys now speaking together. When she and Kristiana parted, the redhead's lips curled up into a small smile. Icy dark blue eyes followed the Irishwoman's line of sight, and no questions were needed. Erin followed her own blue-eyed blonde out of the cafeteria then, though she did look back just once. For a moment, two pairs of deep green eyes met, but she knew she wound never know if Arthur knew her, or what she was to him. She decided that it was best this way, even if that weren't her choice to make.
Arthur could live happily, and the ache in her heart could finally ease.
She would speak to him later, but for now... for now, Erin knew that things would be alright.