Post-War Recovery

Scrabbling among the rocks, his eyes never lost sight of the hare as it rounded a jutting boulder. Reaching for an arrow with one hand, he twisted himself just so and shot it with his makeshift bow. He really hoped it'd hit it. He still needed one more after this before he felt he could go back to the settlement. Putting his bow back, he shifted his trembling legs and heaved himself up on the ledge and sighed a breath of relief when it didn't begin to crumble under his modest weight.

Poking his head around the rock, he saw the hare heaving and the arrow sticking victoriously in its' side. Hurrying toward the downed creature as fast as the mountain would allow him, the pre-teen reached for the knife he kept in the holster attached to his ankle and leaned over the wide-eyed animal.

"If times were different.." he sighed as he slit the poor creature's throat. Extracting the arrow next, he cleaned it off with the cloth he kept in the arrow's carrier the best he could and then tied the hare up along with the other he was already carrying on his back. Looking around, he took in the crumbling gray of the rocks around him and the scraggly tufts of grass that managed to grow from the cracks.

If they were lucky, they might be able start bringing sheep here to eat it. After they'd done thorough testing of the rocks and their stability, that was.

Standing back up, the pre-teen began the precarious climb down; all the while keeping an eye out for anymore possible prey. Near the base of the mountain, he saw a particularly large hare basking in the day's rare sunlight and grinned. Pulling an arrow, he shot straight down and all but jumped down to inspect his kill.

It was a good one. Quite big and meaty. Adding it to his game, the pre-teen grinned and began the uneventful trek back to his people's settlement. Upon arriving back at his small settlement, he noticed people dashing about and some of the more prominent barking orders at the citizens. Tilting his head in confusion, the pre-teen looked for someone to question and regrettably found that it was only a couple of youngsters hanging in front of dining hall that did not look harried.

Approaching warily, he knelt down beside who he was sure had to be Penny Hawthorne and her cousin Malcolm Stretch to ask:

"What's happening?"

Not even bothering to look at him (the little prats), Malcolm answered; "They're looking for Arthur."

He blinked. They were looking for him? Why on earth would they be doing that?

"Why?" He questioned.

The girl, Penny, all teenage bravo rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Because," she sneered. "He's our responsibility to take care of," she answered with air quotations at the word "responsibility".

"Don't they remember that today's hunting day?"

The boy, Malcolm turned his head then and gaped. "Arthur!" He cried, hazel eyes large and surprised.

Several adults heads swiveled at the shout and when they saw him, the pre-teen whispered; "Uh-oh."

One of them stomped forward. It was Madam Bell. Their Minister. She stopped right in front of him, her dark brows scrunched in a very unattractive unibrow as she reached down to haul him up from where he'd crouched down.

"Arthur!" She snapped, "Where have you been?!"

Struggling to get his arm back, he eventually just snapped; "It's hunting day! I went hunting like I always do!"

Her brow smoothed out as her dark eyes went wide with the realization and then she let him go to rub her hand down her face. "I thought we went over this, you don't have to hunt! We'll take care of it!"

Thinking of the hares on his back and how many the last hunting party brought back the week before (which was none), Arthur felt he had the right to disagree with his boss.

"With all due respect ma'am, they do not know the first thing about hunting."

Glaring at him, she put her hands on either side of her narrow hips and got in his face to hiss; "How are they supposed to learn if you keep doing their job!"

Fingers tightening on his bow, Arthur fancied the thought of shooting her. She was a hard, pretentious woman with few sensible thoughts in her mind. They could send out her hunting party, but they'd bring back nothing and their settlement of seventy, seventy-one (he wasn't sure if Ruth's new baby had been added to the the list of citizens yet); would go without meat for an entire week until they could take the time to send them out again.

While Arthur...he had centuries and centuries of hunting under his belt. It didn't matter if he looked twelve because he wasn't and he could probably protect himself better than any of these "hunters" could.

"If you'd let me go with them-"

Madam Bell raised her voice. "You belong here!" She yelled at him. "You're our responsibility as our nation and I won't have you go out their risking your safety! Who knows what hungry animal is prowling around out there! And what about the rovers!"

"The rovers are my people too, ma'am."

She bared her teeth at him. "They go about stealing supplies, children, and game from those of us who are trying to make England England again and you still call them yours?!" She roared.

Arthur knew better than to look away from her when she was in the middle of a fury like this, but he couldn't help but take a quick glance at his citizens. They were watching in their silent, disapproving way. They had all agreed when they found him and figured out just who - what - he was that he needed to be kept safe and theirs, but they did not agree with Bell's methods of making him "behave".

He stumbled back suddenly, his cheek smarting and the taste of copper flavoring his mouth. Looking up, he saw Madam Bell glaring at him in a smug, satisfied sort of way. Like she thought she'd won the fight (she hadn't).

These people weren't going to reelect her come June. People liked child abusers even less these days, children were much more precious given how few and far between they came in a world like theirs. Given this, a person who struck a child was judged much more critically - especially in this settlement which was so small that everyone was in each other's business. Bell however, wasn't originally from here like the majority of the citizens and did not grasp this fact nearly as well.

She had showed up as a young woman of seventeen or eighteen with a big mouth and grand ideas. It was thanks to both of those she had the position she held now, but it was also thanks to her big mouth her partner had left her last fall with their toddler son to go live with his sister. Arthur suspected she slapped around her child too (just not in public like him). Sometimes, he wished he had greater insight into his people and could see if she hadn't been hit as a little girl too. It would at least make this explainable in part.

"Well, I hope you learned your lesson!" Madam Bell crowed. "If you leave without my permission again you'll get more than just a little slap."

Tired, he took the hare's off his back and laid them aside as he told her for what had to be the eight hundredth time that week. "I'm not a child."

"Oh, I know," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "You're our nation."

Letting his eyes fall to the dirt ground, Arthur grumbled "that's not what I mean..."

But she wasn't listening and instead was inspecting the hares he'd brought back. She clucked her tongue, "You'd think with all the time you spent away you'd have brought back more..."

He bit his tongue. This was why the rovers existed. Since The Big War, the land and ecosystem had been hurting greatly and couldn't support life as well as it used to. By moving at a fairly constant rate, they allowed things to remain stable and didn't exhaust any of the few resources that had slowly begun to return to their isle in the last fifty years.

"It's like I've been telling you, we need to be more proactive in breeding the sheep and cows, the hare population was small to begin with and with each passing hunt, there are less and less."

She frowned at him. "But they're hares, shouldn't they be breeding like crazy?"

Arthur held back a sigh and instead said; "I'll bring back more next time."

"There isn't going to be a next time," she reminded him with narrowed eyes.

Moving aside, the pre-teen nodded; "right." And with that, he walked through their small town and back to the the "capital" and "courthouse" where he'd been bequeathed a room of his own.

Going up the steps, he waved at a couple of the guards; one of them, John, smiled and waved back. The pre-teen liked him best out of all of the men and women who were assigned to watch over their building of law. He was the only one who didn't take the job too seriously.

It was a funny thing to turn over in his head as he took the back staircase up to the living section of the building. Before The Big War, he'd been all about rules, regulations, and being as proper and respectable as one could...but now. Now he just wanted to feeling like he was living, not surviving like most of these people felt. It was hard though, his people's thoughts were dark and left him with a mild case of constant depression and the chemistry that came with this pre-teen body made him want to act out instead of curl up with a bottle of alcohol as it would have if he were an adult.

The only way he knew how to curb the anger and sadness that sometimes overwhelmed him was to be active, to help and be up and about carrying out tasks like the rest of his citizens.

People like the minister felt he belonged safely locked away in the law building where no one could hurt him. What they had yet to understand was that he could be hurt by anything and everything that happened to England itself. A flood? he might end up sick from it. A fire that rips through a populated area? He'll be covered in burns by the end of it. Another country invades? he'll feel it in his bones. They can't stop him from getting hurt. All they did by locking him away was hurt their settlement. Having your very nation work beside you did much for peoples moral and he could see it in the way they seemed to come alive at the sight of him. How little children trailed after him, reaching for his pant legs and sleeves to ask him:

"Are you really England?"

He was a light for their dark times and they were essentially snuffing him out.

Sometimes, Arthur felt he should sneak out and join one of the bands of rovers. But these people had found him first and it mattered, he could feel it in his blood like he could feel the land healing beneath his feet.

These people - all - his people were in the dark ages and they needed an epicenter. This town, with him in it, could be that starting point if Madam Bell would just stop treating him like was fragile. Like he could be broken just by breathing the polluted air.

The Big War might have thrown his country (and him) back in time, but it didn't mean they couldn't grow strong again. Together.

Opening the door to his room, he didn't go to his bed like he usually would; instead, Arthur took a seat in the chair he kept by the window. It gave him a nice view of the "market" and a well-sized tree that attracted the settlement's children to climb. Usually, he liked to just sit and watch them with his window open and pretend he was down there with them. But today...today Arthur wanted to try something a little different.

He wanted to see if he couldn't sense another nation. Maybe one of his brothers. France. Portugal or, hell, Belgium. He just needed to feel someone. It felt like he was all alone right now and it made him fret that he was the last nation standing - even thoug he knew that simply couldn't be. There had been other countries who'd better prepared for wars like The Big One and surely they still had to exist somewhere out there...and if he wanted to, Arthur knew he could throw his senses out in those directions to touch those nations.

But today he just wanted to see if anyone of his neighbors or brothers still existed. Since being discovered by the settlement and waking up here, he'd been too scared to reach out to find out if others were alive like him; but now he was in a moment of isolation that told him if he didn't feel something soon, he was going to go mad.

Swallowing a big breath, he clutched his knees as he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Slowly, he let his sense go farther and farther; jumping from person to person until-

There.

That person his was talking to didn't belong to him. Prodding that a little further, he tried to get an idea of just who that person belonged to. Poking and touching their essence, he realized they felt similar to himself; not very much, but there was a shared history between his people and their people (that could be anyone). Looking deeper, he took in the sight of the land that this person called home. It was green. Very green and covered in rubble and people moved nomadically along it; fishing in the oceans that surrounded them and hunting for easy game and suddenly, suddenly, the name of this person's nation came to him.

Ireland!

It was one of his brothers! One of his brothers was out there and he was alive! Bounding up from his chair, Arthur caused it to fall as he clapped his hands and stomped his feet.

"Padriac! Oh Padriac! You're out there!"

So elated, the pre-teen would have danced himself out of his settlement's law house and across his country to find his brother, but his bedroom door opened to reveal one of the young maids that worked here.

Her snub-nose flared, she inquired "Are you alright sir?"

Still smiling, Arthur swept forward and hugged her. "My brother's alive," he whisper into her shoulder.

"What?" she murmured confused as she hesitantly patted his back. "You have a brother?"

Pulling away, he looked into her eyes and saw she was part-frightened, but very curious too. "Not in the same sense as you people do, but yes, and the one I'm talking about is Ireland."

Her eyes went distant as she tried to recall the makeshift schooling she had had growing up. "Ireland..." itching her chin, the maid asked; "That's the island beside ours, isn't it?"

The pre-teen nodded. "The very one, my dear."

She blushed at the endearment, but with sly eyes remarked; "I know the minister wouldn't agree to the idea of you going out that way...but maybe I could mention it to the representatives of the house whilst I'm checking on them this afternoon to tidy up their offices? If they hear that their could be people out in Ireland...they might look favorably at the chance to send a small inquiry group out their to see if we can't have a beneficial alliance and trade agreement."

Arthur may have hugged her again. The maid was a smart woman. If she ever wanted to take a seat of the representatives, he'd help her where he could. She would be good for the settlement, that much was sure. Clasping his hands behind his back, he gave a small bow and expressed his gratitude. "Thank you, that would be very greatly appreciated."

She reached out and ran a work-roughened hand down his boy-soft cheek. "You're welcome my dear country."

"Please," he whispered, "Just call me Arthur."

The maid smiled. "Yes Arthur," and with that said, left him to smile out at his people beneath his window.

Seven months to the date of telling the maid about his brother, he and a group of two men and a woman set out for Ireland (despite Madam Bell's many protests). It wasn't an easy journey, the weather didn't cooperate and he was pretty sure they took a couple wrong turns before they reached the coast across from Ireland. But once there, they took their kayaks from the cart they'd used to transport them and set them on the ocean waters.

"This will likely be very difficult," he told the three.

They smiled at him in a bemused sort of way. "Done this before, have you?" The woman, Shannon, questioned.

He shook his head. "I swam," he told them.

Their smiles disappeared and they instead stared at him as the people of the settlement often did when he talked about doing what seemed to be "impossible" feats for a pre-teen of his age.

It didn't matter how many times he told them he used to be twenty-three, they always forgot or simply didn't believe him. Not that he felt he could really blame his people, it still felt unfathomable to him somedays to have been twenty-three and now twelve. That just wasn't how life worked.

But, with much struggling, they made it to the coast of Ireland where both the men began to weep with relief - making Arthur and Shannon thoroughly embarrassed. Setting up camp there, they ate the very last of their jerky and Arthur offered to hunt some fresh game, but they talked him down with the excuse of it being "too dark" and to wait for morning.

Agreeing unhappily, they settled down to sleep.

When they woke the next morning, a group of four men were standing around them inspecting their things and pointing well-kept guns at him. One of their men, Ron, nearly stood up to demand what they were doing; however, Arthur kept him in place with his nation-strength.

None of these people had experience with working guns. They were all rusted and broken and things of the past that had been ended with The Big War. But to Arthur, they were very much real as he stared into the barrel of one.

Clearing the lump from his throat, he asked them. "Are you Irish?"

One man, a curiously chubby fellow, laughed at him. "What else would we be, aye?" He countered.

"I-" he shrugged. "Is your nation among you?"

They all tensed. "Our-" one of the younger started. Stalking over, he leaned in close to the pre-teen, inspecting him with vibrant blue eyes. "How d'ye know about nations small-fry?"

"He's ours!" Hue, the other man, shouted.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Arthur wanted to throttle Hue; but Shannon beat him to it if the loud "thwack" which was followed by a moan of "oww..." was anything to go by.

The Irishman came together, looking at them and talking in hushed tones and what had to be codes or something because Arthur could not decipher it at all. And then, one the men swooped down and lifted the pre-teen to his feet.

"Yer comin' with us, lad."

Shifting, Ron yelled; "What about us!?"

The chubby man whom Arthur was beginning to suspect was their leader, smiled at his people. "We'll come back fer ye soon, don't ye worry!" And with that cheery assurance, dragged him away.

A short walk later, they came to what looked to be a make-shift camp sight where people were chattering, children were running and chasing dogs, and in the middle of it all, an old man sat in front of a young man talking quietly over what seemed to be a game of chess. Taking him straight to the duo, Arthur managed to pull himself free just in time for both to turn their heads.

The young one, he looked just like -

"England!" Ireland shouted in shock. Standing up, his older brother didn't even look fifteen with his hairless face and oddly cropped hair. None of that mattered, though, as his older brother grabbed him and put him in a headlock.

Struggling against his brother and his knuckles, Arthur squawked; "Ireland!"

Laughing, his brother released him and his cat-eye green glittered. "Took ye long enough to get out this way," he smiled at him.

"You-" the pre-teen gaped. "Why didn't you come and visit me, you arse!" he snapped, hitting him once in the chest for good measure.

Fingers hovering, Ireland seemingly told himself "screw it" and brought him close to say "I-nobody's really wanted to make the journey...they weren't sure if the English would be friendly."

Glum, Arthur replied. "The rovers probably wouldn't be," he admitted. "But I think that's the settler's fault. They're pretty mean to them and have made the rovers quite jumpy and violent..."

"Ah," Padriac replied.

Grinning then, the pre-teen wrapped one arm loosely behind his brother's back. "It's good to see you Padriac," he whispered.

"Ye too, brat," his brother murmured bring him close. "God, I didn't even know I was missin' ye this much until-"

Pulling away, he smirked cheekily at Padriac. "Until now?"

Blinking his green cat-eyes, Ireland gave him a little poke. "Hey now, don't get smart."

"Alright, alright," Arthur agreed. "Padriac, d'you know if the others-"

His brother shook his head. "I haven't done much searching, but I...North's gone. I held him as he died."

Arthur's lip wobbled, but with a quick blink of his eyes nodded and whispered "I'm glad you were with him then."

"Yeah."

Seeing that Ireland didn't want to talk about it, Arthur instead said; "We should look for Scotland and Wales - together."

Taking his hand, his brother gave it a small squeeze and agreed; "Together."

And when England looked up into his brother's softer, younger face, he felt like he could believe him.

What do you think of this post-apocalypse/WWIII fic about England? Did the explanation about his regression make sense? What about his behavior and how his meeting with Ireland went? Was that good or should Ireland have been more hostile you think?

Let me know!

Thanks for reading everybody and pretty please review!