Title: Retrograde

Characters: England/Ireland

Warnings: Death and a wee bit of blood.

Word Count: 3 052

Summary: In every beginning is an end, and for every rising empire there is one which must crumble.

Notes: I know, what happens in the kink meme stays in the kink meme but this one is sort of my baby. I love it. Unbetad, so if you see a mistake do tell.

V.

-And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star

The house is eerily silent as the man sits in his chair, high arms and back dwarfing him, making him seem so insignificant as the clock strikes twelve.

'The witching hour,' that seemingly young man muses, green, green eyes staring ahead at nothing. The chiming of the old clock rings and echos throughout the house, until it becomes strange and distorted in the empty halls. 'Like memories,' the man thinks bitterly, his calloused hands wrapped around a fine china tea cup, the dark liquid gone cold. 'Like memories, they come and go, and the older you are...' the thought begins to die, and so he lets it.

The man looks young, at first. His green eyes are sharp and his back is straight, nothing about him is old at first glance. Yet, as he sits in his high backed chair, his body morphs, until he is both young and old. And he is old, he can feel his bones creaking, even as he sits there, unmoving. He can hear whispers dancing in his ears despite the fact that he is the only thing still breathing in this house. However, the old young man is neither decrepit nor senile, he is startlingly nimble and lucid.

The creaking is the earth itself, moving at its slow, slow pace, nigh undetectable, and completely unstoppable. The whispering is the wind as it whistles through his home, his true home, not this cold, empty wooden structure he is presently residing in.

It is the memories which mark his age. They are fleeting and sharp, and through all these bitter, trying centuries they have morphed into extremes. They are now each entire stories of their own, tragedies to rival that of Orpheus, and comedies to rival The Wasps. The true events are neither, they are simply small moments in a long, long existence. They are nothing more than testaments to the sad fact of what he is; a young face stretched over old bones.

The clock stops chiming, and the young man does not move. He can not bear to walk his silent dark halls this night. He could not bear to pass under the watchful eyes of portraits which line otherwise colourless walls. He can not bear to pass under those old remnants, those tombstones for the ages. And so he does not.

IV.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want."The green eyed man jerks at the audacity. The man kneeling in the pews now is ignoring him, his messy black hair obscuring his pale, drawn face. Arthur stands at the back of the dilapidated church, his eyes trained forward, lips drawn into a thin line, eyes as hard as the emeralds they resemble.

"He makes me lie down in green pastures/He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul." Arthur does not interrupt the man as he murmurs in the empty church. The priest is no longer here, dead, or left for America, Arthur is not sure. It does not matter, God has left this land, Ireland will learn. He will learn to stop with his lies soon enough, even if he hasn't yet.

Arthur does not say anything to this man uttering falsehoods in his own sad little church, clutching at a sad little wooden rosary with sad, thin fingers. White, broken skin stretched over old bones. As the man continues his prayer, Arthur becomes incensed by the brazen lies as they fall from chapped lips.

"Surely goodness and love will follow me/All the days of my life/And I will dwell in the house the Lord forever." As the other islander finishes, Arthur lunges forward, an uncalled for rage wracking his body.

"Why do you utter these lies," he snarls, hand tangled in dark curls, Ireland's eyes flash, but he remains silent, "you say these things as if you believe." Ireland says nothing and the rage swells again, choking the Empire. "Surely you do not believe, that the God Almighty loves you, look around."

The church they are in is a sad little stone thing, it does not have any pews, and the floor is dirt. Arthur bars his teeth in a grotesque semblance of a grin at this thought, everything in Ireland is dirt. The ground is dirt, the water is dirt, and now, even the food is dirt, and it is driving all the dirty little people from their dirty little hole, to the promise land, to America.

The rage, so constant, so familiar, returns before it can even fully retreat. However this time, it is accompanied by something else, that panic he feels sometimes when Matthew is looking away, looking south, or when he sees that golden head bowed over that damned silver and black rosary, just like Ireland is bent over his rosary now.

His snarl fixed back on his face Arthur drags the stubbornly limp Irishman up by his dark, tangled locks. "Do you not see, you wretch," they're faces are inches apart, noses almost touching, enraged green eyes boring into silently rebellious blue ones. "I am your salvation, I am your God!" With that he throws the other nation on the dusty, dry ground.

From here on out not a word is spoken, it is nothing more than the clinical steady debauchery of one another. Arthur is the only one making any true movement, and his actions are cold, precise. This is not lust or desire, it is a lesson. This is nothing more than proof that God doesn't care for Ireland. Even in His house, Arthur can and will do as pleases, and as the green eyed nation finishes, wordlessly, he hears it, repeated as a quiet, defiant mantra.

"Grant me justice, Lord! I have walked without blame.
In the Lord I have trusted; I have not faltered.
Test me, Lord, and try me; search my heart and mind.
Your love is before my eyes; I walk guided by your faithfulness.
I do not sit with deceivers, nor with hypocrites do I mingle.
I hate the company of evildoers; with the wicked I do not sit."

III.

The child he finds sitting on the church stoop does not surprise him. It is sleeping when he arrives, and the priest, a nervous fellow, seems relived to know someone is taking it away. The locals tell a tale of this church, and this child. They talk of a battle long ago, between a druid and a holy man. They say the holy man managed to slay the druid on this very churches step. They also tell of how the blood stain could not be washed but after some time, a child appeared on the step, and the blood stain was gone.

Demon child, some call it, while others call him Tam Lin, and some others calls him Baile. Home. Arthur finds the names all very astute. Home is what the boy is, and in many ways he is both a Changeling and a demon, born of blood and sorrow.

At any rate, the names are irrelevant. He is Ireland, and he yet he is not. His black curls and blue eyes are reminiscent of the man who could, in part, be considered his father, but his thick brows and the small wooden cross, as well as his age, mark the differences between them. Érie is dead, and Ireland has taken his place. Arthur promises himself that this time, under his guidance, this island will become proper, civilized. English.

Arthur tells himself that the old Ireland's death is a blessing. The old Ireland, Érie, was a savage and a heathen. His death proved those things. The Englishman tells himself, as he lifts up the small new nation, that it is better this way, and that this way all will be as it should. Yet, as he approaches the place he will be staying, the child nation laying limp and trusting in his arms, he feels hatred.

He hates himself, for daring to have loved the Ireland of antiquity, with his flashing eyes and bright, feral smile. He hates Érie, for daring to try and oppose England's rule, the rule of the Lord God. More than anything, he hates the child in his arms, hates him for not being who and what he should be. That night as the child sleeps on a small straw mattress, Arthur watches.

Arthur watches the rise and fall of the small chest, inspects the smooth skin of the child's face. With a tenderness he does not feel, the older nation reaches out, pointer finger gently tracing down the child's nose and across gently parted lips. The child does not stir, and so, the finger dips lower until it rests over the calm heart. Arthur than lays his palm flat, feeling the steady beat beneath his calloused hand. On a whim, the hand moves back up and wraps around the small, fragile neck.

Arthur wonders, with a sort of morbid fascination, how easily he could snap the little bones, or how easily he could squeeze the life out of the boy. He wonders, but he does not bother. Nations do not die from bodily wounds, or at any rate they do not stay dead. He quietly and efficiently removes himself from the boys person, returning to his own mattress, but not until after he presses a soft kiss on the boys forehead, in an attempt to feel anything other than resentment.

The attempt fails, and Arthur nervously licks his lips. They taste bitter, and as he lies awake, green eyes trained sharply on the smaller form, all the Englishman can think is 'your father would have gutted me.'

--To monstrous Nothing yield your little breath;

You shall achieve destruction where you stand,

In intimate conflict, at your bothers hand.

II.

--Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

...rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The locals know who he is here to see. Humans seem to have an innate sense of just who is and is not human. So, it is no surprise that when he walks up to a group of them, huddled together in their village square as the local garrison goes through the huts, that the Irish people regard him with more distrust than hostility. Even the Irish know to fear the unusual, Arthur muses.

The soldiers are almost done when one calls for his attention, "milord," the man is nervously addressing Arthur, his eyes focused somewhere near his knees, "we found a man in one of the houses, he appears sick, the men..." he trails off at the sharp look Arthur gives him.

"Very well, I shall see to him, you and the others shall, now, by your leave," Arthur's cold, dry response is enough to send the poor soldier reeling to get out of his way. Paying the humans around him, Arthur proceeds into the small hut the soldier indicated.

Inside it is dark, the floor are dirt, and the entire thing is constructed in sod, while not impressive, Arthur must commend the bastards for finding a use for all their grass. As his eyes adjust to dimly lit room, they settle on the sick man.

It's him, looking much more worn and drawn than Arthur ever remembers. The dark brown hair is a tangled mess, the knots inextricably bound together by sweat and dirt. The face, which stares back at him, defiant despite how haggard and tired and sick the man is.

Arthur is struck, struck with the awful realization that this is what a dying nation looks like. He doesn't have any frame of reference, when Rome died he was far away, and Arthur, no England, didn't mourn the Empire's passing. Now, however, the grief is palpable, and despite the fact that Érie has always been able to see past his masks, Arthur tries to keep calm.

"Pray..." it doesn't work. The one word comes out strangled and harsh and desperately childish, but seeing the looking in Érie's eyes he continues. "Pray tell what has left you in such a state, Ireland?"

Ireland struggles to stand, and once he does, Arthur is forcefully reminded that the man is notably taller than himself, "pray..." the other nation rasps out, his eyes alight with a fire Arthur hadn't seen in anyone else, ever, "that, is precisely what is wrong with me!" The exclamation is a snarl, filled with loathing the likes of which not even France has ever directed at England.

With that the dying nation lunges forward, his dwindling strength returning with a surprising amount of force. Ireland drags him outside, where the locals and the guards start, but Arthur warns them off. Ireland does not have the strength to fight him. They approach the village church, a sad little stone affair, and as they reach it Ireland collapses, his energy spent, on the stoop.

Coughing as he tries to catch his breath, Ireland gestures at the church. "This is what is killing me, your God and your prayers and your priests..." the accusations die in the face of another coughing fit. "You're killing me, England."

The use of his nation name stings, and Arthur can't help but retaliate, "I'm doing no such thing, Aodh." Unlike Arthur, the use of one name or the other doesn't seem to bother Ireland.

"Yes, yes you are," the man starts, but his breath hitches and he groans a little, obviously in pain. As the fit passes he looks up at Arthur, and there is a bemusing look on his face. It makes Arthur uneasy. "It is my own fault though," the black haired nation says, his voice quiet, "I should have known, it's always been this way."

Arthur, cautiously, takes a step forward and then kneels to look into the blue, blue eyes of his former caretaker., "what is it you speak of, Ireland?"

Ireland gives him a small, cruel smile and Arthur knows that this is probably the last they'll ever see of each other. "To love or be loved by people like you and I England, is either to destroy or destroy." Taken completely off guard Arthur stumbles back as the man before him starts to cough, his whole body shaking and blood coming up.

"So," Arthur is surprised by how cold his voice is, though his eyes are itchy and his throat has a lump, "does my furthered existence mean you don't love me?" The question, though seemingly nonchalant, is anything but. Arthur wants the other man to say he does, to tell him he is wanted, but he does not.

Instead, the once proud nation looks up at him, his mouth shining with his own blood, and the gleam in his eyes breaks Arthur's heart.

Not anymore, Arthur.

Rage takes over at the silent statement, and as Arthur's blade shines with blood and the nation slumps, Arthur chokes out "if only you did, maybe you would have won." With that, he turns around, ignoring the wail of the locals, the louder wail of wind, and the almost silent screech on top of it all, the sound of Bean Sidhe and faeries mourning their last ally.

Arthur ignores it all and walks away from the sad little Irish church, blood on his hands and clothing; and an empire is born.

I.

--What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?
Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.
No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:
The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

The boy doesn't belong here, he knows that, but Aodh isn't able to send him back over that thin stretch of water. Things are peaceful for know, and the boy is happy. His eyes are shining and as green as Aodh's home any day. He has light, light hair which Aodh usually sees among those who occasionally try to invade his shores, but he isn't bothered.

At this moment, the child is running after the faeries, who giggle and try to coax him into their traps. The boys doesn't know any better, but Aodh is there to steer him away from the faerie rings and the streams. He laughs with the child as it runs back up to him, his little arms wrapping around the older nations knees in an enthusiastic hug. It is nice, and calm, and the day is unusually sunny.

The older nation bend and picks the boy up, "tá mé chomh doirte sin duit," he murmurs into sandy locks. The boy obviously doesn't understand so he presses a gentle kiss to his forehead. They walk quietly, the boy nodding off in his arms. Aodh allows him to, tomorrow there is training and work to be done. He lets himself dwell on these thoughts, these happy ideas and plans, and ignores the feeling in his stomach. He ignores the feeling that this child will only cause him grief, after all, that is in a time very far from now.

Once upon a time...