Title: Caged
Author: perfectioninmypride
Summary: They are trapped, two birds in a gilded cage of their own making.


AN: This is set sometime in the first Opium War. To be honest, this plot bunny has been sitting there forever just begging me to write it and I had a really weird time writing this. England and China is actually one of my favourite ships.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Hetalia


Caged

In moments like this, he dreams.

Sometimes the dream leads him right back. Back to a time he can barely remember, when he was young and free, with the world laid out before him (for him) and him alone.

He misses that time when his spirit seemed so safe, sailing the seas and soaring above his home, and the homes of others. Everything had been so different... had it not?

He tries to remember, but the dream is hard to recall, and often he thinks the dream is just that - a dream.

Even the oldest nations forget.

Old. He is so, so old.

He feels his age, recognises that he is isolated (like a certain island which he will never be never ever forgive) kneeling before this Western Nation.

The man with such unnaturally bright hair, and poison green eyes looks down on him with something other than love, something that yet isn't quite hate.

It scares him, but he will not back down.

Freedom comes at a price, and he is willing to pay anything.


You used to be so big...

He's not sure why the words haunt him so. Why that broken voice replays itself over, and over, and over again until he starts to scream for it to just shut up and go way.

It never goes away, but he is the god damn British Empire and he swears that one day...

He banishes those stupid, lying words and relishes the temporary silence. He can't dwell on the past. It is the future that matters, the future and the power that it brings to him.

History be damned.

Nothing good comes of the past. There is nothing he wants to remember.

All there is, is the present, the taste of a victory honey-sweet on his tongue, the rush of a winning a shot of adrenalin to his heart. This is not the high of any drug, but something much stronger.

So he smiles at the nation before him and whispers soothing nothings, the meaning of which he is not even sure.


The western nation's voice is heavy with faux-calm, and he almost shudders.

The man is mad. Utterly mad.

"It won't hurt... it's what's best for our people."

He is not some child, easily swayed by candy-coated promises. He is a nation proud, a great kingdom.

The smoke from the pipe the Englishman brought with him clouds the room, and everything is in a dense fog that claws at his throat and eyes.

It does its best to cloud his mind, but he will not cave.

"We need each other you know."

"You need me."

The Western world has an obsession, a craving for the things of his own country. Silks... porcelain... tea...

But they have nothing in return.


He will not be denied.

"You're being ridiculous."

Who does this nation think he is? He is nothing... nothing compared to his own Empire.

The sun never sets and all that.

"I know when I am correct,Ying Guo."

And with that he finds something inside him boils over, and anger (is it even anger at all?) floods him and the words, those lying words come back.

You used to be so big...

He still is. He still is.

You used to be so big...

He cannot be challenged. He will not be challenged.


He senses a change in the Englishman's demeanour, and grips his own robes a little tighter, clutching the soft silk tightly between the fingers of hands that refuse to tremble.

"You should leave. You have nothing that can buy my people, or my country."

"You will regret this."

The nation's green eyes are narrowed as he storms out.

He relaxes the grip on his clothing and sighs.

A storm is coming, one he has fought for a long time.

He fears that this time, words will not be enough.


"I told you that you would regret it."

He puts the hard edge in his voice deliberately, mockingly.

He's won! He's won!

The land is practically his to control, and it feels glorious.He looks down at the Eastern nation… so… broken. The power of the poppies… he knew he would find a way, and he has.

You used to be so big…

Yet still those cursed words won't go away, but now he can argue back.

China… China is defeated.


He doesn't want to think about how it came to this. How everything spiralled out of control so quickly, and slowly, breath by breath, his people were hooked.

The smoke of the opium (he is a slave a slave to this and he craves it even now but he knows he shouldn't but but but…)is a dense blanket, smothering his thoughts.

It's getting harder to fight it, but he must.

"Why did you do this?" he chokes out the words, and that disgusting, addictive smog fills his lungs, numbing him, forcing his eyelids to droop.

"You said I had nothing to give you."

And the Englishman laughs, a terrifying, utterly insane sound that sends an icy splinter of fear into his heart.

"You were wrong… you were so, so wrong."

"Please… Ying Guo… England."

And he stops laughing all of a sudden, and the quiet is strange.


"Please… Ying Guo… England."

The voice, a slurred melody, floats up towards him and he stops. If only to listen for a moment, listen to that strange tongue, the twisted inflections that betray how foreign, how new...

He lets his gaze drop to the nation, on bent knees at his feet. Brown eyes... no, golden eyes once so defiant, are glazed over now. His own eyes drift down the nation's body.

Hair, so fine like that silk created by his so-called Middle Kingdom, spills, black ink against the parchment paleness of his skin. A delicate face, a little too feminine perhaps.

So fragile. So pure.

All of a sudden he feels the need to reach out and touch him. He has to mar the perfect skin, to leave long red marks along it and ruin the porcelain likeness. The urge comes from somewhere deep, buried beneath memories of something a little happier, less dark.

You used to be so big...

He reaches out and runs his fingers through that ridiculously smooth hair, and almost laughs again and how easyit is, how wonderfulhe feels.


He stops fighting. It is too hard, simply too hard.

He gives in to the fumes.


He isthe British Empire... and he is drunk on power.

He gives in to the rush.


They are trapped, two birds in a gilded cage of their own making.

Neither can live without the other, yet like this, neither will survive.


I have no idea what I just wrote. None at all. Review?
Edited 7/12/2012