Title: Dublin Rising

Author: StingInTheBackground

Genres: Revolutionary Ireland AU, Romance, Action/Drama, Angst, Historical Fiction

Warnings: Violence, AU

Characters: Kurt/Blaine with a smattering of others

A/N: Historical notes on my LiveJournal.

It would be so easy to attribute this mess of a rebellion to recklessness, or sheer stupidity. But there was nothing reckless about Blaine's confidence; it was angry but almost sad. So Kurt held out his hand instead. "I'm Kurt. Hummel."

Chapter One

Kurt knew when he bought his round trip ticket that there were whispers of revolution in Ireland. When he walked through Dublin his first day there, he could feel it in the streets. But the weather was finally nice and he sang a bit as he strode along the main road to mail his next overseas letter. He couldn't have known that the Irish republicans had taken the post office.

Dear Dad,

I won't hold it against you that you were right about London. And none of my friends invited me home for the holiday. I think any of their families would combust if their son brought home someone of the Oscar Wilde sort for Easter.

The classes at the Royal Academy of Music were in fact its one redeeming factor; the rest was a mix of big heads and narrow minds. But it was easy to make light of things on paper, and what was the point worrying his dad from four thousand miles away?

I'm writing from a mostly clean tenement in Dublin. Not the glamorous vacation I'll be taking once I have private bookings and an overpaid agent, but for now it's as far as a pound and half sovereign will take me. So, my program...

Dublin was nothing close to the places Kurt would find himself once people were paying inordinate amounts to study vocal music with him, not the other way around. For one thing, before today it was perpetually cloudy here – or maybe it was just April showers.

But Ireland was also a little eye-opening. Women in white shawls on the street, doing what exactly, he wasn't sure. Men soliciting better-dressed men for employment. Kurt was younger than most of them but his clothes were ironed, so he'd already had to decipher a variety of propositions in a variety of Irish accents – from the fluid lilts of girls who flirted, to the thicker brogue of the laborers, to the drawl of the young men who'd gone to school at some point.

"Copy of the terms of the Irish Republic, sir?"

"No thanks," Kurt said.

Things were nicer at the middle of commercial Sackville Street. He could let his guard down a little, a little more, and eventually he reached the upper town center, the condensed cross-section of Dublin.

From the outside the general post office simply looked busy, all bustle and bodies inside the windows' glare. Kurt hummed to himself, a song he sang with his friends back in America, as he approached the broad steps and Ionic columns. Even the portico was cavernous, made of granite and white marble. He knew from two days there that it normally sheltered a mid-day's shift of call girls, but not today. Even most of the pamphleteers were taking the morning off, so while Kurt could almost hear the business inside, mail and banking and telegraphs, the block outside was calm.

He took the steps one at a time, distractedly, double-checking the postage on his letter. A threefarthing's worth, to Lima from Dublin. Baile Átha Cliath, he'd learned. Hardly anyone actually seemed to speak Irish in the city, but it was on every damn sign as if they couldn't do without it.

Two boys in earth tones and grey were talking on the second step from the top, half under the shade of the portico. One of them was clearly in charge of whatever they were hatching, or maybe it just seemed that way because he had to be going on six feet tall. And Kurt lingered when he saw the other. Just for a moment.

Strictly speaking, nothing about him should have made Kurt pause from twenty feet away and take a second look. He wasn't tall, or quite as put-together as Kurt's type. The bow-tie was a nice touch, crooked between the lapels of his speckled jacket, and his hair was gelled in a style Kurt hadn't seen much of since leaving the States. There was a cap flopped out his back trouser pocket, pulling the material taut.

"We might as well go ahead, Wes," he was saying. Huh, when had Kurt gotten so close? "We should go ahead while we have the chance." Kurt barely even noticed the boy named Wes, he was so fixed on figuring out what it was about the short one. The eyes, he decided, and suddenly it seemed obvious. The boy moved down a few steps away from his friend and shielded his eyes as if he expected something from the street, but Kurt could see the hazel brown, underneath thick eyelashes. His expression was clear, alert.

"You want to tone it down," said a voice by Kurt's ear, making him jump. It was a monstrously tall young man, Kurt's age or thereabouts, wearing dark pants with a long red stripe and an official looking top. Not just official- militant. 'Capt. Smythe,' read the insignia on his thick white shirt, to the right of a line of red buttons. He was part of the royal army.

"Um, excuse me?"

Captain Smythe smirked towards the two boys but spoke to him. "I know he's pretty, but you'll get yourself into trouble." His diction reminded Kurt of every self-assured man in the London academy. Smythe glanced down at something in his own hand, a new book of stamps, and laughed to himself as if a thing so simple could be worth his derision. Then he raised the book so Kurt could see the Irish harp on the stamps, the cost printed in Celtic script. "That's a laugh," he said, "but you've got to hand it to them. Listen, guy, just go home."

"What, by royal decree? I have as much right to be here as you do."

"Not quite as much, Yank."

Kurt snorted. "Where's your red coat?"

"I lost it," he said simply. "And I'm just trying to warn you. He's pretty, but you'll get in trouble." He pocketed the stamps.

Kurt didn't like him and was prepared to tell him so, but then something was going on. The taller boy named Wes was speaking to the street. Smythe shrugged and moved away, pulling a half-apple from a brown bag. But Kurt noticed he certainly didn't go far; he kept an eye on the dark-haired boy who stood a few steps below his friend, in rapt attention but for a few anxious glances about them.

Kurt looked to Wes as well, who moved to the very top step, then one down out of the shadows, and produced an off-white paper from his jacket. He unrolled it and read aloud. "In this hour," he announced in a clear voice, "the loyal men of Ireland claim its independence, and their right to defend its life and livelihood."

He and the darker boy both glanced over Sackville Street. A woman slowed down to squint, then repositioned a basket under her arm and went about her way.

"We, the Irish volunteers, unite to preserve its dignity and to defend the Irish Republic from English tyranny by the taking up of arms." He looked to the milling Dubliners for a response, and got none. Only the usual sounds of the street.

He opened his mouth again, and shut it. Smythe stood off to the side, biting into his apple and waiting to see what he would do next. Even Kurt knew how hollow the words were, with no one to receive them. The Irish "Republic" was nothing; it didn't exist.

It was 1916, and Ireland had belonged to England for four hundred years.

Kurt chanced another look at the other boy whose name was probably none of his business. He'd turned half-way from Wes and towards the street, humming something with his eyes closed, mouthing words as if he was too nervous to remember them. Wes stepped away to the side, rolling the paper and watching the boy expectantly. Kurt realized with some confusion that he was about to sing.

And boy, did he. Slowly, at first.

"Cois banta réidhe…."

Kurt's jaw actually slackened.

"Ar árdaibh séibhe."

He couldn't have been formally trained – and Kurt knew training when he heard it, good or bad – but it couldn't have sounded sweeter if he had been. "Ba bhuachach ár sinsir romhainn." He was a tenor, pitch spot on but wavering finely under emotion that almost threatened to make his voice give out, reminding Kurt of nothing he'd ever heard in the States.

A couple stopped on the curb and shielded their eyes. Smythe tossed the apple core to the side and moved in, eyeing him. The boy's magnificent voice seemed to get a foothold on itself, and leapt upwards a notch. "Ag lámhach go tréan fe'n sar-bhrat séin, Tá thuas sa ghaoith go seolta!"

It was such a remote language, and every word was thick. But even the low vowels that came from deep in his throat were smooth when they hit the air. Whatever the hell was being said, it was obvious to Kurt that although this boy was the back-up plan, he was a good one. He had a small crowd, and now a larger one.

When he finished Wes gauged the group, before holding out the rolled up paper. The boy was sweating; it was after noon. He wiped his hands on his cropped pants and took it.

For a moment Kurt thought he was going to sing the rest, but he'd earned middle Sackville Street's attention; he cleared his throat again and continued speaking. "In the name…" he coughed once, "in the name of the dead generations from which we receive our old tradition of nationhood, Ireland summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom." The Irish in his English was muted; his accent – or rather, what was an accent to Kurt – didn't dominate the words. But it guided his phrasing up or down in a way Kurt wasn't accustomed to yet, just a sliding vowel here or a lilt at the end of a sentence like an unresolved suspension.

Wes had held the sheet at the top and bottom, like an announcer, projecting the end of each phrase the way Kurt used to in early acting classes. But this boy, whose slicked hair was starting to wave into a less confined shape in the sun, clenched both edges as if he were reading a single sheet of newspaper, eyes darting to his audience as if he could will them to care. The next few minutes were of flowered phrases that wouldn't have meant as much in a different vessel, without this boy who should have been off at a university, meeting girls.

Kurt cocked his head – meeting guys? – and instantly felt his cheeks redden, ashamed.

The boy paused and stood up as tall as he could, which wasn't very, and didn't need the script for the crux of what he'd come to say. "Therefore, we proclaim the Irish Republic as an independent state," he ignored a ripple of sardonic laughter from the back, "and the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies." A couple eye rolls preceded a thinning out, as some of the stragglers in the back moved on, and a couple others strode out from the thick of the crowd purposefully, angrily. The boy didn't flinch; if anything he read more loudly, more clearly, nervous but steadfast.

The others stayed, impressed by his reverence for language, his awareness of the words that his colleague couldn't convey. As he neared the end his eyes raised from the sheet once and chanced upon Kurt's. "In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, with discipline, prove itself worthy of the destiny to which it's called."

It felt only natural to smile when their eyes met, but then Kurt realized that was weird, so he turned it into a look of encouragement. The boy nodded, satisfied, and when he finished he exhaled, looking back at the rest of the mass. Oh, Kurt thought, he thinks I'm Irish. He thinks I'm a convert. Which made Kurt feel ridiculous for stopping. He knew there was no Irish Republic; he knew these two were loose canons, underschooled or over, parading a gospel that was bound to fall flat. Already people were dispersing. What was he even doing here?

He tried to blend in but fixed his eyes on the boys, the shorter one slumping as he watched the crowd diffuse back into the street. No one approached them, although Kurt noticed Smythe loitering, a little too casually.

The boy who sang was crestfallen, holding the paper back to Wes, but he pushed out both hands, keep it, and said, "no Blaine, it's all you. Hold on to it."

His name was Blaine.

Kurt couldn't stand and watch the two for any longer without drawing attention to himself, so he finally headed to the entrance of the general post office, fishing in his pocket for the letter. He thought for a moment about unsealing it, jotting in an addendum to his dad about these two young men that… what? That had an educated chip on their shoulders. He shrugged and pulled open the building's weighted door.

And froze.

He was met with a hum of activity that had nothing to do with mail carrying. Boys his age, fully grown men, a few women with their hair back in handkerchiefs, completely rearranging the desks of the office so they fit around the walls, even on top of one another. Kurt took a few steps in, and heard excited voices over the rest:

"They heard him, alright, they're coming!"

"It's like they were waiting for it –"

"Get in position!"

A dozen men disappeared to the back of the GPO, a dozen or so more emerged and squatted with their backs along the wall's interior perimeter, and another handful began removing the glass panes from each of the quartered windows. A couple men were posted by the windows, and it wasn't until Kurt studied them that he saw almost every one of them was armed. A thread of fear shot through his insides. Guns, these people had guns. Was the boy named Blaine part of this?

Whatever this was, Kurt had no business walking in on it. He turned immediately for the entrance he'd just walked through, his hands clenched, his letter crinkling, but both doors swung open in front of him, and Wes rushed in with a cohort at his heels.

"They're coming, they're here! They're past the river!"

And then it was all a hitch of noise, a couple shouted orders and the sound of metal. Kurt stood in place, eyes darting. The door was completely blocked by an incoming tide of people who had materialized from nowhere outside, a motley of guns and pistols appearing from under jackets. Kurt was close to panicking. A door, a window, anything.

Then a body in a jacket he recognized barreled past him, but the boy named Blaine must have seen the letter in Kurt's hand because he caught his shoulder as he swerved to face him, never quite stopping, brown eyes almost angry. "What are you doing?" he shouted, taking a few steps backwards with the current.

"What are – I didn't – I was just – "

"You're American?" Blaine said, even as he was shuffled further back. "Get out of here! Moore, go out Moore Street!" Then someone grabbed his arm and said something urgently into his ear, and Kurt wasn't given another thought. He watched the boy's olive-toned face disappear, the grey jacket and his dark hair retreating further into the GPO.

And then it was too late.