I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
-Pablo Neruda
His hands are calloused from centuries of using weapons of war. They used to be swords with sharp edges and tips, but at some point they went out of fashion as gunpowder and guns rushed in. They're still heavy and burdensome, but Arthur adapts to these changes in fashion of war much better than he does with attires and hairstyles.
His kings like that about him while his queens wish he would be more refined. He does, too, but not for only the sake of being refined. The reason is the same as the ones behind his participation in certain continental wars.
France.
.
.
The thrills of war have waned, yet they still wage it. Sometimes there's no reason other than their very existences - like their destiny is to fight each other till the end of times, like this mutual hatred is an exquisite bond, unbreakable, unyielding.
Arthur has shed too much blood at Francis's hands to think it untrue. Likewise, Francis has lost much blood to Arthur, to England. Yet neither can die as long as their peoples live, and so their lives are distorted and made to oppose each other at any chance.
Such a way of existing is endlessly tiring even for immortals - and it does wear Arthur down, little by little. Perhaps this explains the violent shifting in Arthur's feelings.
.
.
Death is constant, and it's hard to mourn when it takes good people so often. So Arthur has gradually stopped. Way before Elizabeth's time, but only after the plague. Francis, he suspects, had stopped way before. Perhaps because of Arthur, because of England.
It's the scent of death that is the worst, the one thing that got to Arthur the most in the past, but his sense of smell has weakened quite a lot. Gunpowder, perhaps. Poisons fed to him by people that feared immortality? Quite so. (Beloved kings, beloved duchesses! How they fear the eternal life in eyes of the colour of English forests.)
Francis, however, is the most effective poison - quite enough to make Arthur suffer, quite enough to bring him to his knees but never enough to keep him permanently down. The same applies in reverse. Decades and centuries pass, but Francis remains in this world with him, infallible in beauty but not in battle.
.
.
Battlefields and rivalry and endless tricks and lies make a most difficult and strained relationship, yet there is something Arthur is hard-pressed to call hatred within him. Oh, there are times when he wishes to wrap his hands around that fragile neck and break it! - Oh, he has done so, he has murdered, he has, and he too has.
There's been dead skin beneath his fingernails more than once. His whole body has been washed with blood. He can feel splatters tangled in his hair if he tries hard enough or dreams a lucid memory.
He dreams about Francis quite often, these days, when he's not feeling quite like himself. When the breeze from the ocean offers nothing to calm him. Why is it Francis that sneaks into his mind like a thief into the night? Surely there are better candidates - like Portugal, if one had to think one from the Continent.
But no, it's Francis that comes to him when the sun has gone down, in dreams much sweeter than reality and memories much brighter than the past.
.
.
Blond hair that looks like fairies themselves have woven it, and blue eyes that rival the bluest shades of oceans. Many songs could be composed to celebrate Francis's fair features, and the man himself would be the first to admit that.
Arthur has dirtied that beauty with blood and with grime; he has bloodied that fair hair and pushed despair into those blue eyes.
Arthur destroys more than he creates - is it any wonder France calls him an uncultured brute?
Arthur loves, Arthur hates. But whom? France? Francis?
Oh, isn't that the mystery.
.
.
It's another battlefield, another hill of bodies accumulated from their meaningless spats. Arthur doesn't look. His nose has gone numb to the smell. His ears only listen to the nervous chatter from a fairy friend that's showing him the way to Francis.
Francis is a mess when he finds him. The fairy flutters away, and Arthur comes to a halt and observes. Quiet, quiet, stern-lipped and judgmental as usual.
Blood-clotted hair, deep blue uniform torn, trembling shoulders - all of them stir a warmth inside Arthur, satisfaction or something of the kind.
Affection?
Arthur's a mess, too. Blood clings to him like a cloak from the old times, and some drips from his long bangs that are in need of a trim. His uniform barely covers the bruises he has weathered. Same old, same old.
Francis looks up, but not at him. "England."
"France." Arthur's voice is even, contrasting how highstrung he feels, how tight his skin is.
Arthur takes Francis's head between his hands. Several times he has bashed it against a wall or some other hard place, but now he holds Francis's cheeks gently. As gently as he knows, anyhow. It's been a while he has been gentle with anyone; it's a skill that's easy to forget between battles and conquests.
Francis smiles thinly, and he looks much older than his physical self usually suggests. He's always been more sensitive than he lets on, Arthur muses. A somewhat hypocritical observation to make, since he's fairly sensitive and temperamental himself. But it's always easier to notice those aspects of personality in someone else, isn't it?
Arthur smiles back, lukewarm and quite unnatural if he has to describe it. A life stretched too long shakes even the steadiest minds.
Isn't that how this love came to be?
.
.
Jealously, jealously, they will continue to dance around each other.