Fight
Collecting responses for the "write me a sentence of fic and I'll write you the next five" meme, originally posted to my Tumblr (with a few exceptions that are parts of other pieces). For each fill, the italicised quote is the prompt. Prompts were anonymous except as noted.
"So willing to fight for your country Athos but so against fighting for me, I died more that day you let my carriage go than the day a noose you called for me scarred my neck."
She's changed, true to her words; England has leached the colour from her, left her grim and hollow-eyed in a way he'd never seen before, even when he'd dropped her locket and turned away an eternity ago. But they had shared moments before parting ways, moments that had whispered of hope and love and things he'd almost forgotten, and he knows – God in heaven, all too well – how deeply it cuts to have hope snatched away.
"I am gentleman enough not to fight for a lady who has made her feelings plain," he ripostes, the words stiff and formal. He thinks of carriage tracks and a pale blue glove and the unexpected ache that had knifed through him when he'd realised she was gone, an ache equal to that when he'd first seen her here, and it feels inevitable that this is what they come to: cut on each other's tongues, bleeding on each other's words.
England is a dreary hell, and they are each the other's devil.
