A/N: Typically enough, I let this stagnate for two months before thinking, to hell with it, no way am I waiting for a further six/seven months to post this up. And it's not like this is simply stuffed chock-full of festive cheer, anyway.
It just struck me, upon reading up on the 1914 Christmas Truce, how very easily this could have happened.
As some background info – though anyone reading this probably does know it already, since even Hetalia has that strip of England kicking the football splat into Germany's face in a remarkable gesture of goodwill and all. Hem. So, here's the scene: Christmas (obviously), 1914 (well well, we'd never have guessed), and the First Battle of Ypres has just eased off. At the Western Front the English and the Germans are still at it, though their trenches are now ridiculously close to each other – cooking could be smelt, conversations heard, etc. On 5th December General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien (of II Corps HQ) issued some long command to all Divisions that boiled down to 'armistices and being friendly is an absolute no-no', but despite this, there was exchanging of gifts and whatnot all along (well, almost, some areas are still fighting, boo) the front, with the two sides playing football in one instance. They used empty bully-beef cans for the ball and helmets for goalposts, but a little artistic licence is allowed here… And let it be noted that the Germans won, 3-2.
Also. It was a German who initiated the, uh, friendliness. With the words 'Merry Christmas. We no shoot, you no shoot'. (Awww.)
(In the same-ish area, 81 British soldiers die of sniper fire on that day. I'm not sure of the German number, but I imagine they had a similar thing going on.)
I suppose I should add a warning, and it runs thus: particularly…sensitive…readers would do best to stay safely away. There is a little…detail.
As said, this is for TheNinjaOfEpic. (Never judge a book by its cover, similarly, I can tell you, never judge a person's epic-ness by their username. You will be sadly misled, my child. Nyaha.)
That, was some A/N. Have a tassel-adorned (vile) green armament. Common name: pea. But dear me, what it is to be common. (Lucythewan, if you eve chance to read this, now you know I do compromise.)
Title inspiration: the carol 'I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day', by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Lyrics are at the bottom.
Enjoy.
Did We Hear the Bells, On Christmas Day?
When Arthur wakes, the sun is only just coming up, though the lightening skies aren't what he sees right away. Instead, before is eyes are open, he is hazily conscious of a low murmuring, which he at first thinks to be the silty remnants of his dream – not that he remembers dreaming to begin with – that had clung on even after sleep had washed away.
The second thing he's aware of, is that it's bloody cold.
Half-awake, he reaches a hand out to grip his covers and haul them back over himself – they must have slipped during the night, damn those pathetic excuses for blankets. He gropes around, eyes still firmly lidded in the defiance of the going away of that almost-comfortable (or as comfortable as it got round here, anyway) feeling, and he vaguely acknowledges touching onto something warm. His eyes open reluctantly, and he curses.
What he sees is, well, mud. No way to romanticise that, though he'd be willing to stake his blanket that poets back at home are scratching their heads trying. Another rag of a potato-sack would be better than just the one he had. Or didn't have: he was currently slumped rather less-than-gracefully over the lip of the trench; he must have fallen asleep at his post. Briefly, he wonders why no-one woke him. They'd probably been too tired, and had barely been able to stager into their bunks themselves, let alone notice his absence. But that was entirely too reasonable a viewpoint for someone stiff and numb with cold. And tired and irate and significantly less than enchanted by this whole situation. Oh, and, not to mention that he'd just cut his fingers on some stray rock, and the warmth he felt was his own blood leaking sluggishly out.
Out of habit, he flicks his eyes round the (deserted, it was still too damn early in the morning) trench, and upon satisfying himself that it was indeed as empty and desolate as a twelve-foot deep ditch in a wasteland (he claimed part of the credit for that) in December could be, he plops the offending fingers into his mouth. There were no pleasantries in war (and maybe that's why they attract him so, with all its coarseness, charmed by its lack of such), and the British Empire sure as heck wasn't going to die of gangrene in a grave he and his men had toiled away digging for themselves.
He notices that the murmurings are still going, but that irrelevant thought is soon put out of his mind by his falling flat onto his back onto the frost-hardened muck that was the ground, as his gingerly tries out his limbs. To hell with it, if there was no-one around to hear: he flings out a barrage of most un-gentlemanly curses, lobbing them one after the other like grenades, with hardly a pause for breath in between.
(The murmurings have definitely stopped now.)
He doesn't feel a heck of a lot better when he's done, panting slightly, momentarily lost for the words he had so easily spewed forth only seconds ago. He watches the condensation from his breath wisp away, a myriad fragile spirits (men, damnit, men who'd died for the very person who'd been too busy dancing with the fairies) he hadn't been able to save.
Supine, fingers trawling limp in his mouth, he realises that he's waiting. For a sign, for salvation, for one of his fairies to come down and forgive him, for anything. But most likely, it would be the bell that would rouse him, followed by a steadily building sway of morning chatter, the rustle of blankets being folded, the clink of teaspoons against dented tin mugs.
He turns his palm up, all dips and furrows, an intricate chain of mapwork that he knows almost better than the grooves and valleys of the back of his hand, where he can just about make out the veins, the means of transport for necessities, a web that runs right the way through him with numerous stations and docking bays, wrapping him tight in its meshes. Pulsing. Alive.
He raises it upwards, towards the strip of washed-out blue that isn't obscured by the roughly-hewn trench walls. Send me a blessing.
Nothing. Then–
"Fröliche Weihnachten," came a tentative shout.
…What?
It takes his brain several long seconds to process the slightly hesitant…blessing? and several more to work out that yes, it had come from the neighbouring trench: so the muted conversation had indeed been from (German) solders awake even before himself, and the well-wishings had only been called over when enough time had lapsed after his (decidedly less amicable) shout-fest.
His eyes, the only two flecks of green remaining in the expanse of land they've churned to a mis-shapen, disfigured pulp (then sown their sins into it for good measure, scattering pellets of lead that took care of its own fertilizer. Perhaps a little too well.) widen, and he fumbles for a late reply that he never does give.
So this was his blessing, was it?
The corners of his lips twitch a little, and he almost smiles.
***X***
It's later in the morning, and excitement is crackling like static in the air. Or maybe he just hasn't slept enough, and he's confusing it with the crackle of tearing paper: fingers eager for as much contact with the precious contents as possible delve into small packages. They should have started the too-familiar daily grind of peppering and hauling meat back and hour or two ago, but it's clear that even the most sullen and churlish of them want to lose themselves in the (pitifully few) lines of familiar handwriting, each in their own fond, longing ink-woven world.
Who is Arthur to deny them? Let them enjoy the break, it was only once a year; it was worth it, for the mud to finally crack on their cheeks in stiff but genuine smiles. He watches their simple joy, the soft, glowing light in warm eyes. And he thinks: they'll probably not get another.
As for himself, well. He too smiles at last, wryly, playing with the edges of the card that had come along with his Bible-in-a-box. Nor would he, in the same way he didn't get one last Christmas, or the year before, or any of the many years before that. He's not getting one now, for that matter. He lets out a wheezy puff of breath. It could have been a laugh.
Suddenly, one of them, a lookout, gives a cry of alarm. In the flurry that ensues, men grabbing their rifles and scrambling to position, those treasured letters fall to the mud, mere scraps of dirtied paper.
It's a lone German infantryman (and barely scraping that: did the Germans just recruit that young, or did this one slip his way in?), arms clasped awkwardly around a very small fir tree, a few flickering stubs of candles balancing precariously in its dark green branches.
(He really was young: Arthur knows he is the only one who can see the yet-smooth cheek (it was definitely too much to hope that Germany had run out of men so early on), eyes that should have been clear but where cast over, like a shadowed sky before it rips and rains (Arthur's seen a lot of that), and the uncertain smile on his lips that teeters and falters, but is there nevertheless. He's always been able to see further than must other nations: he wasn't going to make content with just that speck of an island, oh no. he set his eyes on faraway prizes, and he won them.
Indeed, many had expressed surprise at his not being short-sighted with greed.
(He'd laughed, he really had, when Alfred had arrived back on his doorstep after it all, mangy and wet through like an unsuspecting kitty, used to being pampered, stepping out of its habitual comforts and finding itself swiped up by a thunderstorm, showered with piercing chill instead of affection, and he'd lifted his head and he'd been wearing glasses.))
No-one was quite sure how to react: he doesn't seem to be armed, save for an armful of needles (and fir needles at that), but rifles are readied and bodies tense anyway: better off safe than, well, dead.
"Merry Christmas." He stumbles a little on the words.
Arthur, training his eyes on the mess of blond hair under the helmet, and the troubled blue eyes, could have liked to be able to say on the spot that yes, that figure picking across the barbed wire was Ludwig (and how significant that would be), but no; he was just another grey-jacketed toy soldier – albeit moving of what must be his own violation this time: Arthur can't imagine any commander, English or German, encouraging their troops to fraternise with the enemy, even if it was Christmas, even if they lived (ate, slept, joked, killed, died) only a few feet from each other. After all, that was why he'd chosen them.
"You no shoot, we no sh–"
An ear-splitting blast, as if the air itself was screaming as it was rent in two by the rifle-shot. A bullet had torn into that poor broken toy, now just one of the many others littering the ground, little grey pieces of a general's game. And it hadn't stopped there: it had torn out of him, too, clean through his back (there was nothing clean about it, the raw explosion of living flesh, the ragged, gaping hole, as if someone had forced their hand in, took hold, and pulled). Torn asunder all those nervously good intentions.
He, too, wanted to add to the din – the initial burst of lead and blood had died down, but now the Germans were retaliating, raging their throats raw, howling their fury and their grief. Projectiles were flung over, landing futilely short of their target: bully-beef cans, mainly, thrown uselessly in a gasoline-flare of anger. Even a football, which rolled unevenly to the side of their fallen comrade, only distinguishable from the other heaps of bloodied cloth by the tree he still clutched, as if at a lifeline.
The foolish hope of a Christmas Truce, hah. What, would they have kicked around that football like old friends, had that soldier been allowed over? Exchanged gifts, exchanged pleasantries, snippets of hard-to-come-by words of comfort? Sang hymns?
Maybe. But in the end the dove hadn't managed to make its way through the Symplegades, after all. Before it had been set off, the white-winged herald of peace, there had still been the hope: so long as it wasn't disproved there was always the hope that their (peaceful, damnit!) advances wouldn't be crushed to bitty little fragments, like ground glass under a heel. Or a dove between two clashing Cyanean Rocks.
It strikes him, that the whole scene (it disgusts him just a little that he can only think of this as a scene, as if everyone running around to save him and themselves is just a show for him to look down upon, and this particular occurrence, why, it would hardly make a blip, it was so unsurprising, so commonplace – one more almost-man down, add that to the statistic, and call the whole sorry affair a tragedy) could be comical.
Instead of the olive branch to signal that it was safe to come out and not drown, the dove had carried a whole bloody tree. And it had plummeted to the ground under the weight of it. Peace wasn't that easy, remember that, you idiots. A jumpy sniper could easily shoot through its wings, poor albatross.
His hands clench into tight fists, and he shakes, expression twisting.
If only to stop himself from laughing.
A/N: And probably the sniper was patted sadly on the back and that was that.
Lyrics, as promised:
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!