Although this is technically set before The Element (at least for the Scotland/France parts), it was written a couple of weeks ago - years after The Element was written - and I think it works better placed afterwards in the series order as it's one of the few of my Scotland/France fics written from France's POV, and hopefully gives a slightly different spin on what's happened (chronologically) before between them.
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October, 1915; Western Front, France
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As has become normal in recent weeks, France wakes with a sudden start, half-choking on the fresh blood pooling at the back of his mouth.
His harsh coughing and the rattling of his cot's thin metal frame as his body arcs and shudders against it drum out a point and counterpoint to the percussion of gunfire seeping down through the sodden earth from the trench high above his tiny room.
His lungs feel too heavy for his chest to bear, too full for his ribs to contain, like he is drowning on nothing but the dugout's thin, mausoleum air.
The sensation passes as it always passes, but it leaves him wrung-out and exhausted, the palms of his hands spattered with bright crimson droplets and streaks of gore.
He has been wounded before, but never like this. Never this gradual, relentless deterioration that feels like he is being devoured from both the inside out and the outside in.
He's wondered of late whether this is what dying feels like, even though he knows he cannot be. Their kind do not suffer from human illnesses, and they do not die quickly; not without the sort of catastrophe that would destroy their lands and their people and everyone and everything that was ever part of them in an instant.
This war is a new form of hell for him, but it is not that.
Nothing but your own fear talking, he tells himself sternly. Cowering and snivelling when, now more than ever, they need you to be brave.
He has to remind himself of that several times as he embarks upon the protracted struggle of getting to his feet, as it's the only way he can gather the courage to continue.
His knees throb like a rotten tooth as he bends his legs, his elbows creak and shake as he pushes himself upright. When he swings his weight forward, his skin tears yet again along the line of one of the tender weals that crisscross his back. The pain is sudden, sharp and nauseating, a heated blade being dragged mercilessly through his flesh, but it is familiar now.
He bites down hard on his bottom lip, his teeth slipping naturally and easily into the ragged depressions imprinted there by many mornings such as this.
Beyond the shrill whistle of his own laboured breathing, he can hear the faint sounds of England and his brothers stirring in the room next to his: muffled grumbling interspersed with the occasional louder, more pointed retort. They never degenerate into their more typical arguments, however. War seems to have brought a paradoxical peace to the brothers.
Listening to them talk and move and live at a slight remove, France still cannot decide whether he made the right decision by demanding his own quarters back when they first were assigned here. Maybe it would have lessened the fear if he was not alone with it.
Maybe their concern might have eased it.
But maybe, though, concern from a certain quarter would never come, and that, he's sure, would make it all the worse.
It always did before.
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By some ill fate or cruel providence, when France finally summons the fortitude to leave his room, it is in the exact same moment that Scotland chooses to exit his own.
Scotland doesn't notice him at first, because, as has ever been his habit when he is not actively engaged in conversation or some other pursuit that demands his full attention, his back is slumped, his shoulders curled, and gaze downcast, as though trying to minimise the space he inhabits in the world.
France has often thought it an odd affectation for a man who otherwise takes no great pains to be quiet or unobtrusive, especially as it does so very little to diminish the real size or girth of him. He has always seemed so unshakeable, a true fixed point, and in the days of their alliance, France never felt safer than those times that he had Scotland guarding his back, as solid and dependable as any shield.
Once, when they were scarcely more than boys, Scotland had held him close, and vowed in a low, raw voice that, as long as there was breath in his body, he would protect France from anything that might seek to do him harm.
He had been so passionate that night, so full of fire, and everything that had passed between them subsequent to it was thus an aching disappointment. A betrayal of that initial promise.
Even so, France is almost overwhelmed by the strange, unwelcome urge to ask him if he still held himself to that same pledge now. It's a craving that France had believed he'd successfully rid himself of along with so many of the other foolish hopes and dreams that he had clung to during his youth.
That it had somehow survived that ruthless purge of more than three centuries ago angers France so deeply that when Scotland finally lifts his head and calls out his name, he pretends he did not hear him speak, just as he had then.
Just as he had then, he deliberately turns his back, and walks away as quickly as his creaking joints will allow.
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After inspections and chores are done, the soldiers while away their empty time playing cards and writing letters to their loved ones at home.
France has no-one he wishes to write to, nor anything he would wish to say, even if he did.
(Except perhaps, 'Wish I was anywhere but here', which is self-indulgent at best, a cowardly admission he would regret putting his name to at worst. His military-issue postcards remain in his pack, untouched.)
He has nothing to fill his time but idle conversation and yet more idle flirtations which he has no intention of ever acting upon, because the prospect of revealing the slow-creeping ruin of his body to anyone else turns his stomach.
Today, however, he has no heart for either. Today, even that sort of easy, inconsequential companionship seems like it would be more toil than pleasure.
Instead, he searches out a secluded corner of the trench where he trusts he will remain undisturbed to fritter away the many hours that lay between him and the second stand to in solitude.
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As the day wears remorselessly on, France's fingers twitch, and then later tremble. By the time dusk has begun to darken the sky, his hands are shaking so hard that he cannot hold a match steady enough to strike it.
He accidentally snaps one stick against his palm, a second against the pad of his thumb, and, on his third attempt, loses his grip on the matchbox entirely, scattering its contents far and wide across the ground in front of him, where they quickly begin sinking into the soupy mud.
"Merde," he mutters under his breath, patting at his pockets in the vain hope that he might uncover a forgotten lighter that he had tucked away inside one of them.
"Here, you can have this."
The voice is less of a surprise than it could have been, had it belonged to anyone else. Despite his bulk and deceptive gracelessness, Scotland has the ability to move as silently as a cat when the mood takes him.
France looks up at the glowing tip of the cigarette he is being offered, and then, much more reluctantly, shifts his attention to Scotland's face.
His expression is blank, but France hadn't expected to see anything else there. His eyes look soft and mossy in the dim light and the shadows of his ridiculous, incongruously long eyelashes.
France remembers describing them as 'dumb cow eyes' once, when he was deep in his cups and the disappointment was so fresh that it still tasted bitter. He'd called him 'mon taureau' for decades afterwards, and Scotland had never once been angered to hear it, never once protested its use.
(The first time they met on a battlefield after Scotland joined his brothers' union, France's musket had jammed, and in some perverse way, he had been glad to find himself entirely at Scotland's mercy. He'd wanted Scotland to hurt him, eviscerate him, show him a little of that ancient fire in enmity as he never could in intimacy. But Scotland had simply stared at him with that same bovine stupidity, and France realised that, no matter how much he might desire him, he would never again try to recapture what they once were to one another.)
"Please, take it." Scotland catches hold of France's wrist and slips the cigarette between his unresisting fingers.
France flinches at the contact, his stomach lurching sickeningly, and the acid tang of bile scorches his throat. It almost feels like revulsion, but he knows it is not.
Just like Scotland's grip feels gentle, but is a shackle in its own way, nevertheless.
Still, he has sufficient resolve remaining to him that it is the work of nothing more than a swift twist of his arm to free himself from it.
But his strength is crumbling in tandem with his body's dwindling reserves. Today, he is strong enough, but he dreads that he might wake tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, and discover that it has finally been lost to him.