You have no idea how much I wanted to write in Alasdair's accent (because I love Scottish accents so much, I think they're really cool) but I figured that'd be low-key offensive and honestly kind of exhausting to read. I had to publish this before I worked on the next chapter of the main series because I'm still trying to figure out some ground rules for this universe myself, and it just worked out that this fic was the perfect way to do so. I actually posted this on archive of our own the other day and completely forgot to post it here until now... oops...
(BTW, this fic is part of a larger universe, so if you're new here it'll probably make sense to read that first)
In the lazy dawn glow, when the sun just barely peeked over the crest of the rolling emerald hills and only the thrushes trilled to the overcast sky, Alasdiar took a long puff from his pipe. He watched the smoke drift in the groggy morning air, and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe.
On the step below, oblivious to his spectator, a teen hunched over on himself, head bowed and elbows resting on his knees. His blond locks curled short around his ears, growing out from the short military cut he'd kept it in for his years away. A silver-knobbed cane was propped up beside him on the step. He was swaying slightly, unconsciously moving with the dance of the wind.
He looked so young, tall and wiry in the way that young men did when they suddenly shot up like weeds over the course of a season and the rest of their body had yet to catch up. Alasdair breathed in the sweet, woody smoke of his pipe, and let it rest between his teeth. Oh, Matthew was far too young for this.
Alasdair remembered when he'd been but a wee bairn, tugging on his father's coattails. His and Francis' marriage had been dissolved informally by then, but they'd continued to enjoy each other's company for decades after the fact. They'd grown accustomed to waking in each other's beds after state events, to the familiar warmth of a body pressed against theirs in darkened corners. Of course, the Act of Union would destroy any relationship they had together as Francis wanted nothing to do with Arthur, but for a few centuries they'd been very close friends.
Matthew—who'd been Matthieu, then—likely didn't remember him. He'd been but a fleeting figure, afterall, one of many visitors to Versailles, and any memory Matthew likely had of him from his childhood was paired with elegant formal balls and stuffy lords who paid very little mind to the wee lad in their midst. But Alasdair remembered the bonny purple eyes, glowing in the candlelight, and the childish giggles that echoed through the empty halls.
Those eyes now had dark circles weighing them down and a thousand-yard stare.
Alasdair took a drag of his pipe. Christ, Francis, he wanted to cry. What have you done to your boy?
The blame was all of their burden to bear, Alasdair knew, just as much as it was their job to guide the fledgling Nations into maturity, but it was far easier to cast it to someone who wasn't there, to pretend as though you were entirely innocent in it all.
He let the smoke drift out of his mouth on the next exhale, and pushed off the doorframe, coming to sit on the step beside Matthew. He didn't look at the young man next to him, kept his gaze fixed on the distant forest.
"You're up early," he said at last, low voice breaking the silence of the dawn. "Been here all night?"
That was a rhetorical question. His coat rested on his knees and his shirt was rumpled in a way that would give Arthur a heart attack if he knew. Matthew flicked bloodshot eyes up at him, then quickly averted his gaze to his feet.
Alasdair waited for Matthew to say something, but didn't pressure him. He just smoked his pipe and watched the countryside come alive, birds flitting between branches, the tenants' cows baying distantly in their pastures, the sun lazily rising in the sky. The mist hanging low in the air glistened in the sparkling light, setting the whole valley alight with wisps of ethereal flame.
"Arthur wouldn't want you wearing that."
Matthew's voice was so quiet it took Alasdair a second to even register he'd spoken. He glanced down at himself, at the green, white, and red-striped plaid that tied over his shoulder, then huffed a laugh and brought the pipe back to his lips. "Arthur can go fuck himself. They repealed the Dress Act years ago, he doesn't get to dictate what I wear. If I want to wear my breacan an fhéilidh, then I damn well will."
That got a small laugh out of Matthew, which quickly died and they were left sitting in the silence of the dawn once more.
"How do you do it?" Matthew asked suddenly, curling in on himself to hug his knees. "Forgive him, I mean."
Alasdair rolled his eyes. "If you think I've forgiven him, lad, you're a muckle gype."
Huffed, Matthew sent him an irritated look. With the angle he tilted his head at, Alasdair could see the shiny pink scar on his neck disappearing below his collar, where he knew Matthew's heart had been burned out and left to fester into infection. "I meant how do you stand to live in a house next to him?"
Alasdair barked out a laugh. Some days he felt like he was one more pointed comment away from committing fratricide. Some days, he had to take his horse out to a distant glen to remind himself why he actually shouldn't do it.
Matthew looked at the forest with hollow, distant eyes, and Alasdair sobered. "This is about Alfred, ain't it, lad?"
The silence was answer enough. Alasdair shook the ash off the top of his pipe and drew in a breath, watching the frail embers blaze back to life. "Well," he said, blowing the smoke into the same little rings that made Matthew giggle when he was wee bairn, "I have to remind myself that this is Arthur, the same one I've cared for since he was a feral babe." He grinned, a far-off look in his eyes. "Aye, you should have seen him fighting off the vikings, all of four feet tall and hauling a sword that was as long as he was tall..."
He cleared his throat. "Arthur ain't England. Us Nations, we're human as much as we're not. That's what you got to remember, lad. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I forgive England for Culloden and the Clearances, but that wasn't Arthur's doing. So I can't forgive England for it all, and I've come to accept that a part of Arthur will always be England, but I also know that he was my wee brother first."
Alasdair sighed and set his pipe down on the stone step beside him. He unwrapped the top of his plaid to envelop Matthew in its folds. The boy leaned into him, skin as cold as a Canadian winter, and soaked up the warmth Alasdair was offering.
"I killed him," Matthew whispered in the silence. "Put a bullet through his head in Washington."
"Aye, good on you, lad," Alasdair said, brushing a curl out of Matthew's face. "It sounds like he had it coming."
Matthew scowled at him. "Seriously? That's your response?"
"Well, what do y'want me to say?" Alasdair asked. "That you shouldn'ta done it? That Alfred was right in invading you? That you should have just rolled over and taken it like an eejit? You stood your ground, Matthew, and you can't be faulted for that."
In all honesty, Alasdair had no idea what Alfred had been thinking, invading Matthew. The lad weathered the harshest winters Alasdair had ever seen, roots planted strong like an evergreen in the frozen ground, refusing to bow to the wind. When he cried it was like an iceberg breaking free, crumbling into the ocean below. His laughter was the roaring of the St. Laurence and his smiles like Canadian gold. Sometimes Alasdair swore saw more of Canada than Matthew in this small body before him.
Love was politics for their kind, nothing more, and he'd removed himself from that long ago. When his father Faded and Germania slit his mother's throat, when Arthur took her place, wee bairn that he was, he'd decided that love was for fools.
And he'd been proved right. They were Nations, they changed their whims with the tide. While their own personal beliefs may remain, they were bound to the country, to the humans that decided their fate. They were promised eternity, but their immortality was conditional and came at heavy cost. Within his second century, he'd given up on getting too close to humans, their fleeting lifespans too fragile for him to deal with. Their lives flashed before him in an instant, wrinkles deepening and limbs aching, while he stayed forever young. Mary Queen of Scots had been the last human he'd allowed himself to love, from the very moment she was placed in his arms to her execution at Fotheringhay. He hadn't even been allowed to attend to his queen in her last moments. Her body still lay in foriegn soil.
Even among Nations, love was a fickle thing. He'd loved Francis once, had been loved in return, but as always, they were at the beck and call of their rulers. Crisp evenings walking up the mile between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, early mornings in the gardens at the Palace of Fontainebleau. They had been formally married for nearly three hundred years, casual lovers with each other for another few hundred after that. Marriages between Nations were usually just political, rarely anything came between them. Often, the two parties went decades without seeing each other more than a handful of times, required to do nothing more than play nice at the occasional conference and try not to start international incidents over long-held grudges. The humans in charge dedicated what they could and couldn't do. Lord forbid if he wanted a night to be Alasdair and not Scotland, a night spent with old friends and past lovers, without the demands of politics hanging heavy in the air.
So he'd given up on true love, true unselfish love, until Alfred had damn-near pounced on Matthew when they'd brought him home. Centuries apart hadn't lessened the bond between the boys, they hadn't let it fester the way Alasdair had with his siblings. And maybe that's exactly what the New World was meant to be: a new chance.
Hell or high water, Alasdair knew that Matthew and Alfred would always have each others' backs.
Which made this incident so strange. Part of it was likely Alfred taking his frustration with Arthur out on Matthew, but Alasdair wondered if also something else. Did Alfred fear for Matthew's safety? Certainly he knew that however much of a temper Arthur had, he'd never dream of taking it out on them. Or was it Alfred desperately clinging to the shadow of a changing world? He was trying to fit the modern age into a cookie-cutter mold that was centuries old. Things would never go back to the way they were, and Alasdair wasn't quite sure Alfred had accepted it yet, had accepted that he was partially at fault for it. He'd lived a long time, centuries that folded into millenia until he lost count of the exact date, and there had been something broken about him since the first time he'd taken up arms against his family. But this was about the boy beside him and the brother he'd left behind, not about Alasdair and his own deep-rooted issues with his family.
Alasdair blew smoke out between his lips and watched the sky lighten to a pale pink, and let Matthew seek comfort in the warm plaid wrapped around him.
"I can't tell you what to think," Alasdair said at last. "You're your own person and whether or not you decide to forgive Alfred is up to you," he sighed and dumped the ashes out of his pipe, stomping out the cinders under the heel of his boot. "This too shall pass, Matthew. Eternity is a long time to hold a grudge, 'specially when you have to live through it."
Matthew rolled his eyes again.
Alasdair raised an eyebrow. "I'm not pulling your leg, lad. Listen," he said, tone sobering. He looked to the distance, where the Kingswood towered tall and deep, and could almost pretend he was two centuries old again, his father just teaching him how to shoot, his mother holding his hand and showing him how to draw magic from the earth around them. He could almost pretend he wasn't stuck in this world of acrid smoke and politics and endless war. "You don't have to forgive him, not now anyways. Not even in a decade, if you don't want to. You could spend a century avoiding him, but Matthew, take it from a man who's made every mistake in life with his family: it's a long life we're made to live, and it'll be worse without your wee brother by your side.
"You don't have to forgive him," Alasdair repeated. "Not until you're ready. But don't isolate yourself either for fear of another rejection. You deserve more than a lonely existence, and your father would agree with me."
Matthew startled, as though he'd forgotten Alasdair's claim to know Francis all those years ago. And watching this wee lad, once Francis' pride and joy, wither away to nothing, had been breaking what was left of Alasdair's heart. He may not love Francis the same way he once had, may not be loved by him ever again, but he still cared for his friend, and had promised to watch over his son when he'd given him up after Paris.
"It's bloody cold out here," Alasdair grumbled after a long silence as Matthew processed his words. He unravelled Matthew from his plaid and reclasped it over his shoulder. "Let's head inside before Arthur comes looking for us. Forgiven or not," he said, standing up and pulled Matthew up with him. "I'm not in the mood to listen to his fucking posh accent whine at us this early in the morning."
Matthew's soft answering laugh made warmth bloom in Alasdair's chest. He held the door open for Matthew and watched the boy limp inside, cane clacking against the stone floor, but shoulders lighter than they had been an hour ago.
He let out a deep breath. Matthew would be okay. They all would be.
Honestly, everyone needs all the hugs.
Hopefully, I'll have the next chapter of IHLtSTFtbFotN out soon, but I actually haven't started it yet (whoops) and it takes hours of research for my perfectionist ass to deem it ready to be read by the outside world. Plus, I'm also writing two other fics at the same time, so a bunch of different projects are demanding my attention. But it will get updated! I promise! (And I'm actually really looking forward to this chapter because it introduces some new characters :) if you read Past Memories (blech) you can probably figure out who they are...)