Chapter 3

Havoc

Against his own expectations, the peace held. It was tentative and at first they avoid each other, India bracing for a fight, but gradually the distance shrinks at least a little. India cooks and his charges eat- but Arthur stays in the room afterwards and has a cup of tea. When he comes into the lounge, Arthur doesn't immediately vacate. That sort of thing. It's not totally plain sailing, Arthur presents as completely disinterested- an expert in finding something interesting off to the side of any conversation. The garden. A painting. A mote of dust. It makes it frustrating, when they disagree because India can never be sure the boy is listening. But India is an adult and Arthur is still a child, so it's manageable. Predictable even.

Bengal is anything but. Like Arthur he tries to keep her past and present selves separate in his head for all their sakes. But unlike Arthur, her hot and cold routine is alien to him. Perhaps it's because she looks so much like herself, but when India walks in to the kitchen and offers her a cup of tea he's still jarred by her cold shoulder- a restless hmm or snide comment rather than the warmth of a sisterly greeting. Every conversation is a minefield. Awkward silence where there should be playful rebukes. Vicious barbs in friendly jokes. He'd like to put it down to insomnia- which three days in was now clearly habitual for both his charges- but deep in his heart of hearts he knows that's not true. It's not any one thing, but a creeping relialization cued in over three days of caustic looks and false politeness. She hates him.

So with all that, it's easy to forget that it's England he needs to watch out for.

"FUCK OFF" England's voice cracks with rage. India frowns at the first understandable piece of conversation. Norway had made good on his promise to send his phone number and set up a time for England and his brothers to talk. They'd waited four days. So they could settle in.

"Shouldn't you be in there?" Bengal muttered, looking confused. India shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips. It was a family matter. The child should be allowed his privacy.

A dull thump comes through the wall and India jums up from the hard kitchen seat to go to the livingroom to investigate. The day was sunny, shockingly so- but he was stuck inside monitoring a call he couldn't understand, but which seemed to be slipping from bad to worse. When he poked his head round the door it was to see Arthur hopping around on one foot rubbing his toes as he continues his screaming match. India suspects he lost a fight with the wall.

It's only for a second though. England suddenly puts his foot down with his weight evenly spread and stops shouting. India's been spotted, though Arthur doesn't look at him. India's not fooled- the boy's being quieter, not nicer- a concession to the ceasefire. Even in indecipherable early English he can tell that much. He whips his phone out to text Norway - perhaps they should interrupt now before they really blow up- but before he's even unlocked the loading screen he freezes. England is silent.

But Scotland has not stopped talking. And as Arthur's face goes from lobster red to corpse grey, it becomes clear that the boy is not ok. Every sentence coming through the white plastic phone is low and furious. Punctuated by an almost unconscious sway away by England in each sentence. This,he thinks, cannot be allowed to go on.

Suddenly England lets out a scream of high, harsh rage and chucks the phone away. Bang! Against the wall. India approaches arm outstretched- England backs away eyes open but darting. Unfocused.

"Hey" he says softly.

"What!" That screech is followed by a deluge of Old English- presumably directed at himself with that rapid murmur. The boy is still pale and breathing heavily - he's hyperventilating.

"Take a deep breath and tell me what's happened." India takes a step forward and Arthur takes one back to match. "It's ok." For a moment Arthur stops and goes ridgid. For a split second India thinks he's gotten through. Then 'oh, he's fainted' when the boy suddenly falls flat on his face, India only managing to grab him by the tips of his fingers to soften the blow a little. For a moment he is even relieved - horrible as he feels about it. Argument avoided!

Then the fits start.

They start all at once, a faint tremor in the limbs the only warning before Arthur's whole body starts to jerk and flop like a dead fish. As he watches the uncoordinated movements seem to spread into the shoulders, hips and body. Into his neck. His head whacks a few times off the floor before India can grab and turn him so his twitching body is face up. His face is grey and blood leaks out of his nose- even though the floor was carpeted. And India has no idea what to do.

"BENGAL!" he screams and she comes running but stops short at the doorway, at him kneeling over the tiny spasming body. He can see her face pale.

"What do we do?" he asks, it feels hoarse and his lungs hurt from the amount of air he can't pull in. Her jaw flaps for a moment, helpless.

"I don't know. I don't know - I've seen it happen to humans but-" Her wide eyes meet his and his hit by a horrible reflection of his own ignorance. But it doesn't happen to us. "- umm I-"

She babbles rapidly in circles trying to remember what to do. Then a phrase "-should we hold him still? He looks like he's going to get hurt-" jogs something in his memory.

"No." He says. "Pass me that pillow, I'll put it under his head and we'll wait." She looks at him nervously but does as he asks.

India scours the memory again- an aid, a young woman with laughing eyes who'd been epileptic. When she'd come on she'd told him what to do if she had a fit. Number one had been don't move her. Number two was count how long her seizure lasted. Too long and you had to call an ambulance. But how long was too long? And what good was an ambulance for a nation? How ever much they looked it, they weren't human. Their minds and bodys had their own rules.

Still, he counted. Starting from ten.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen,

His heart was pumping in his throat as the boy twitched helplessly against his own muscles, Bengal frozen beside him, horribly, totally, helpless in their ignorance. At thirty four he seemed to go limp and stop for a moment, eyelids flickering. India breathed out in relief- only to catch it in shock as the seizure took hold again, all the more brutal for its brief pause. Blood appeared around his lips, caught in his teeth as his jaw suddenly snapped shut like a vice. Bengal let out a small high sound of distress. India kept counting. There was nothing else to do but wait.

Eventually after what felt like an age the boy went lax, muscles stilling and then unwinding, freeing him. They sat with baited breath. But he didn't start twitching again, instead laying down quite as anything. Quiet as the dead. India watched him breathe, almost scared to look away. But gradually he unwound and he heard Bengals halting, frightened breaths even out. 115 seconds. Almost two minutes. He didn't know what that meant. He'd remember it anyway.

"Could you-" his voice came out thick and horse. He coughed, cleared his throat and tried again, managing to inject a little false calm into it. "Could you fetch me a wipe? Like a wet paper towel?"

He looked at Bengal, who was pale and wide eyed. She nodded and went to the kitchen, returning quickly and handing him the requested item. For the barest moment he let it sit in his palm, the cold water grounding him a little. Then he leant over and wiped the blood away from Arthurs mouth, hands shaking. The boy didn't so much as twitch.

"Let's take him upstairs and put him to bed. If I carry him, could you get the doors?" Bengal nodded as he wrapped his arms around Arthur's shoulders and knees, suddenly struck by how small he was. He lifted him. Staggered for a moment with the unexpected weight- for all his thinness the boy was made of muscle- and floppiness before writing himself and taking him upstairs, gently maneuvering too-long legs around corners and doorways. He set him down in bed and tucked him up in the duvet, and again, he looked tiny.

Absentmindedly he swiped Arthur's hair from his eyes and smoothed the sheets.

"What now." He jumped and turned to look at his younger sister. It hadn't really occurred to him how much he had relied on her seemingly endless well of knowledge. Knowledge she didn't have in her current form. Seeing her like this, with no explanation, no theory- scared and on the brink of tears- is painfully alien. He can't afford to think about it.

"We wait." There's nothing else to do.

The bedroom was deathly quiet- punctuated only by their quiet breathing. Soft covers swallowed Arthur up and made him look even smaller than he really was. She comforted herself with the fact that he was a good colour and breathing well, but the fact remained that he hadn't woken up even forty minutes later. Those fits had looked painful, so perhaps it wasn't surprising he'd slept through all their attempts to wake him, but India was looking from his phone to England with a steadily increasing amount of worry. Probably finding out how terrible this was and what they should do on his 'internet'. And she was sat here, excluded. Ignorant, useless, helpless.

She fucking hated it.

"This isn't normal is it?" Her voice has a horrible waver to it, which she hates. India jerks his head to look at her as if he'd forgotten she was there. He might as well have done, for all the use she was. He bites his lip.

"I don't think so. The NHS website says he should've woken up after the seizure stops, and if he doesn't we should call an ambulance." She nods as if she hadn't understood only half of what he just said. But she knows that creatures like them don't suffer from the same ailments as humans- not unless something is going drastically wrong with their people.

"Is there anything politically that could be causing this?" Start with the normal. Work your way out. India frowns.

"Not really. Well there is one thing- a devisive decision, it's got everyone upset. Protests." She sits up. Protests were exactly the sort of thing that might spark a civil war - and a reaction like this would be extreme but-

India gives her a shark look. "It's not that though."

"But a prelude to a civil war …" she protests.

"That's not how it works here. Protests are just part of how government works now- look, it just wouldn't cause anything this extreme." Hot anger floods her gut, he's hiding things again. Another thing he thinks she doesn't need to know about- there seem to be a lot of those. But she stifles it down, she's tired, she knows she's not thinking straight. She tries again.

"What does it say could cause it?" her voice measured and reasonable. India looks serious for a moment.

"The only one I can think is relevant is sleep deprivation." Her stomach drops into her feet. "But I think that's only for epileptics so I don't know-"

"It's the curse isn't it?"

The words hang in the air like an ugly great fly, buzzing around their heads. Of course it's the only option left. If it's not biological, and it's not political, it can only be the curse. Whether directly by magic or by magically induced sleep deprivation, it was could only be that. And why England and not her? He was younger, smaller, more vulnerable. Kids, even of their kind, were more sensitive to damage than adults. But it wouldn't stop there. And if it was magical there was no guarantee he'd wake up.

"We shouldn't jump to conclusions." said India, without even looking at her.

"Don't," she growls. He turns to face her "Just stop it. I know it, you know it- don't try and hide this from me like I'm a child. You don't get to coddle me and then order me about like it's nothing." A bitter laugh sips past her lips. "I may be seven hundred years out of time, but you're at least a thousand years too late to be pulling that shit. I won't put up with it."

He's staring at her in shock. It just makes her angrier.

"At least try and act like you care about me as an equal!"

For a moment the only sound is her heavy breathing. Despite never having risen her voice above a whisper she feels breathless and her body is wracked with shivers from the effort. India was folded in on himself, looking guilty.

"I-" His voice is halting, and still quiet. He's speaking Latin, which is weird- but maybe it's just habit with the child in the room. "I don't know. I don't know what could happen- or even what the worst could be. If it's the curse you could collapse tomorrow, or next month. Or never. I just don't know."

"Because we haven't investigated it." I was too busy enjoying myself, she thinks miserably, stupid, stupid girl.

He nods.

"I just, don't understand, sometimes you seem so different and then-" she gestures helplessly. It's not really this situation. It's the whole scenario, it's that she still hasn't spoken to her siblings, and doesn't know why England meant so much to him or why he behaves the way he does. It's his overbearing protection.

She thinks he gets it though, because he leans back against the wall looking sad. No, melancholy.

"1300's, huh?" She feels her face twist in confusion. "Ilah Shah? The man who made you-"

"He didn't make me do anything!" she said hotly. India sighed.

"Sorry, you're right. The one who helped you rebel against me and _" Shaha,she mentally supplied as India waved a hand helplessly. She nodded. He looks relieved and stares at the ceiling. "God. I was such a prick back then."

She blinks in shock and he stares her in the eye. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. You were right, we shouldn't have bossed you about and dismissed you like that. Even if - even if it took a lot for me to admit it the first time round." Suddenly he chuckled. "I'd save a lot of time if I just accepted you were right straight away, huh?"

"Damn straight." But her heart isn't in it. "So does it work? Does Ilah …" She can't bring herself to say it. Does he die for me? Does he fail? Bright, serious eyes and a small smile hidden under his beard. Late night board games. Does it work?

"Yes. He buys you a few hundred years of independence. Then," India winces. "Then we take over again. Then you're free. And then," almost imperceptibly his eyes flick to the side again and pain clouds his features. "Well. You're free now- you have been for almost 50 years. It was just a very bumpy road to get there."

"Oh." She breathes out, gobsmacked and relieved. "Thankyou." It's her turn to look at the ceiling. It's not like her time under them was the worst, she was their precious baby sister after all. And clearly she had so much more to fight. But. A cage was still a cage, and she was relieved to find she'd escape it. Soon even. After a while she says.

"I like you better. This version of you, I mean."

"That's fair."

She giggles wetly. I've missed you. The thought makes her eyes finally overflow and start crying.

"Teach me to work the cooker and I'll call it even." It was a pain waiting for him o wake up at sensible o'clock for her and Arthur to have breakfast.

"Ok."

"And the phone." She wasn't going to put off calling her other siblings any longer.

"Done."

"And English." There's a pause.

"You know he can't speak modern English?"

"Not for him, for the locals- if we're going to investigate then we both need to understand what's going on." It's ambitious but she's a fast learner, and well, she's not human. "You should probably teach him too. It's sad, that he can't talk to his people."

"OK." A look of determination suddenly crosses his face. "Sister, I'll help you fix this. I promise"

"Me too." Says England, green eyes open and shining with conviction.

AN: So this is the totally new chapter I needed to write so that everything else stands a chance of working. Stakes, yay! It's much shorter than the others but this felt like the right place to end it before chapter 4 (which used to be chapter 3) starts.