Disclaimer: Nope

A/N: EXTRA, EXTRA - COME LOOK AT THE HEADLIIINE! HISTORICAL NEWS IS BEING MAAAAADE PART 1.

FOR HASEGAWA, WHO REQUESTED SOME BACKGROUND DETAILS ON THE FRUK HISTORY.

11-14-11 EDIT

Extra 1 - so put your arms around me and hold

One nondescript spring morning, the youngest of four siblings wakes to find his oldest brother gone. His sister, the second-oldest of the group, worries her fingernails but does not slow their trek toward the coast; his other brother, the smaller one, declares the missing sibling a fool. The youngest speaks not, and merely looks to his sister for directions. The creatures of the forest guide them, wings fluttering, little voices joined in soft chimes.

His brother never returns.

Two years later, his other brother vanishes, and finally, he finds himself totally and utterly alone one clear morning. At ten years of age, he knows how to hunt and clean game for himself; he can't cook very well, but he knows how long meat should be kept on the fire, and he knows how to dispose of any leftovers so that other animals don't come looking. His brothers disappear often, and his sister taught him from a young age that he must never depend on them for anything, so when he wakes up, he trusts that they will find him when they need to. Then he looks around, gathers the necessary supplies, and starts walking as the forest dictates.

He never reaches the coast, for he comes across a small settlement that envelops him into their arms. A woman with a smiling red mouth holds him close and croons lullabies to him at night. She calls him Arcturus, like the star, because his eyes glimmer so brightly in his round face, and when he shows her the salves and medicines he can make from the herbs and plants available to him, she cups his cheeks and says that he must never show anyone else. They won't understand - to them, he is already a fae of the wood and the sky. He is already different, and he mustn't draw their attention.

She becomes Mother, and he grows under her care. Mother ages, but never seems to show it: her smiles never stop and her hands, rough as a cat's tongue, don't wrinkle with time. Her hair grays only a little, but most of it remains as long black tresses, flowing over her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall at midnight. The other villagers call him and his skills, his unmatched talent for hunting, blessings.

He knows he isn't, of course, because he's been surrounded by real fae his entire life. The others don't see them, but he and his family do - did. He knows he does, but all he remembers of his family is his sister. He long, tumbling auburn curls, her glimmering green eyes, the freckles on her cheeks contrast so sharply with the olive skin and black hair of his new family. His two brothers blur into each other, and he can't discern who had red hair and who had brown hair, who had blue eyes and who had gray eyes. Eventually, even his sister fades from his mind, and all he's left with are a handful of old songs, the songs his sister sang, the songs Mama sang before that. It's all he remembers of Before - before Mother, before Arcturus. When it was just him, his siblings, and the fae.

Now Mother is the only tangible thing he has, so Arcturus clings to her tightly and relishes in her strange, harsh tongue. He learns her language, but he never forgets the one Mama taught him, and he catches himself humming old tunes every now and then.

Mother falls sick one icy winter morning, and it seems she ages years in a matter of hours. Arcturus is much older, having spent twelve summers as her son, and now he stands tall and strong. A woman with hair brown as the dark earth and eyes blue like the sky lives with him, has lived with him for four winters, but their union is fruitless and loveless; he pushes her aside easily as soon as Mother begins coughing up blood.

The disease spreads across their settlement, killing most and scarring the rest. His wife dies, but Arcturus shows no signs of the disease at all; Mother struggles each day, and when she can no longer move, he decides to break the one rule she told him, all those years ago.

In the forest, he gathers his materials instinctively. He knows what she needs, and he knows how to make it; as long as she survives, he'll face the consequences. Lighting a fire, Arcturus starts his work. Once or twice, he thinks he sees a woman with red curls and red eyes, skin white and lifeless, but when he looks up a split-second later, nobody stands before him.

But a child watches him with big brown eyes, and when he turns to face her, face lit demonically by the flames, she screams and runs off to the men of the village.

He doesn't mind her, too intent on his task, and when he finishes, the gathers the powder in an animal-skin pouch and rushes back to Mother. She wheezes, and coughs, and he barely gives her the cure she needs before men grab his arms and yank him back.

Witch! they accuse, jeering and screaming and tying his arms behind his back, and Arcturus pleads, begs with them to just save Mother. He has the cure, and he knows it, but they think he's killing them.

Logs pile up in the center of the village, and he watches with horror as they bring out the flint. He kicks and shouts as they bind his limbs and gag him with a bit of old cloth, strapping him to a pole and propping him up in the middle of the bonfire, and someone leans over the strike the flame -

- and he watches as Mother, old and frail and so very tired, hobbles toward him, the pouch clutched tight in her hand, but he doesn't know what she does with it. He never knows, because orange and gold flicker in his peripheral, and he smells smoke.

The fire grows slowly, but when it reaches him, the agony is unlike anything he's ever felt before.

It starts at his feet and legs, burning its way up. His skin blisters and his blood boils. The cloth of his clothing ignites, but the rough material frays rather than spread the heat; he twists, and every desperate inhalation shoots smoke down his throat. Then, it licks up his long legs and chest, spreads over his arms, and he writhes, screams barely muffled by the gag. His eyes are closed, squeezed shut, and the tears escaping them evaporate almost instantly in the impossible heat.

He's going to die.

Then, miraculously, the fires fade. Arcturus can't feel anything anymore, his pain receptors burned and ruined beyond repair, but he feels phantom pressure where someone holds him. He opens his eyes, but smoke burns them, and they water as he squints to see his savior.

Red eyes meet his. He hears a soft crooning, melodious and whispering, and he recognizes the lullaby as his eyes slide shut of their own accord.

Far too soon, warmth returns to his arms. Like a poison, it spreads through his veins and up to his chest, increasing in temperature with each passing second, and it soon becomes unbearable.

He opens his mouth to scream, but all that escapes are a few whimpers.

Eventually, Arcturus can think again. The pain increases as time goes on, but he can count the seconds - he can feel pressure over his forehead, fingers, the occasional fall of hair on his forehead. He knows who it is, and his sister sings to him as he contorts in pain. Occasionally, he hears his brothers speak in the old tongue, and it's like they never left him.

His skin prickles, and the burn fades minutely from his toes and fingers, from his limbs, from his face, all gathering in his chest, and he screams into someone's lap and grips their rough clothing as the fire inside him escalates.

Then it stops, just like that, and he feels frozen. He feels like he'll never be warm again, but he finds it preferable to burning.

He opens his eyes, but keeps his gaze on the cloth covering his sister's stomach as she finishes her song.

"We've missed you so much," she tells him quietly.

A sort of power buzzes through his body, and his dry throat aches. He knows what he wants, and he sits up. His sister looks both completely different and exactly like she looked all those years ago: her red-brown tangles of hair gleam in the overcast light, and her freckles stand out dark on her white skin. Her eyes shine burgundy, and he knows his own must be a rather ghastly shade of red themselves.

His brothers help him up. The elder grabs his shoulder and yanks him to his feet; the other grips his hand, lips spread in a wide, white smile.

At some point, they clothed him, but all he wants to know is whether the village is still there. He struggles to understand his siblings when they respond.

"Of course," remarks the older brother.

"We wouldn't ruin your fun," adds the other brother.

"Take your time," advises his sister.

And he takes his time indeed. He takes his time walking to the village and he takes his time terrorizing the survivors; he takes his time chasing them all down, and he takes his time tearing them apart. Mother is nowhere to be seen, and the fae, clearer than they ever were when he was human, whisper of her succumbing to the disease.

Where he should have felt pain, he feels nothing.

He focuses on quenching the burn in his throat, and when his siblings arrive hours later, they commend him for his neatness.

Arcturus. He likes his name. His siblings do not.

The elder one scoffs. "Arcturus? Filthy Roman name."

"Romans have sweet-tasting blood, but that's all I'll say in their defense," sniffs his sister.

"Mother named me after the star, fool. The guardian of the bear."

Shaking his head, the middle brother concludes the argument. "Well, if you like that name, you keep that name. I'll call you Arthur."

His sister regards him thoughtfully. "Arthur. Hmm. I like that."

Arthur.

"Then it's settled. What do I call you?" says Arthur, testing out his new name. The fae giggle their approval, and one of them lands in his palm when he stretches out his arm. He strokes her wings delicately, finally able to see the fine spiderweb designs and the gauzy texture; her eyes gleam red, and her demonic little face twists with mirth. He decides that the fae are far prettier like this, despite their monstrous features.

"Éile," says his sister. His older brother, the one with red hair, calls himself Kieran, and the brunet brother says he's Aeron.

It's strange, to call himself something other than Arcturus.

Years pass. People come and go. Arthur and his siblings remain in the mountains, in the wood, surrounded by the fae and the mythical creatures; he also sees the creatures brought by foreigners to their land, and knows them.

Kieran speaks of a woman with pale hair who bit him that day, decades ago. He changed Éile when she was old enough; Éile changed Aeron when he was old enough; and they left Arthur, still a child at the time, to fend for himself, just for a few more years. Then Mother found him, and he looked so happy, but Éile stayed, prepared to come when Arthur needed him. She saved his life.

"If you call this life, that is," Kieran laughs bitterly. "It's immortality - unrestricted power, unextinguishable existence - but it's not life."

Arthur doesn't know why he remains in this borderland, but he does.

Then he meets Francis. The man is charming, blonde, and strength radiates off him, but his eyes are gold.

He watches Arthur stalk a woman and her husband, prepared to kill them and sate his hunger. Francis shakes his head sadly.

"That is life," he says simply. "It is a shame to snuff it out."

Arthur pauses, and thinks. Francis sees things so differently. "Humans killed me. Isn't it fair that I kill them?"

Francis sighs, but does not move to stop Arthur as the smaller man lunges in for the kill.

When they kiss, it feels like - like - unlike anything he's ever felt before.

It's so right, and he knows immediately that Francis is why he stayed alive.

(As if he ever doubted Francis' role in his not-quite-life.)

"You should come away with me," suggests Francis one day. Arthur lays in his arms, the top of his head slipped easily under Francis' chin. Moments like these - small, quiet, peaceful - tell Arthur how much he loves Francis.

But he's afraid of leaving. Frowning, he considers his siblings, and his eyes fall to the silky material of Francis' tunic, abandoned next to their entwined bodies. "But I can't leave them."

Francis tightens his hold around Arthur's waist, and doesn't speak.

Arthur decides. Éile approves, and so does Aeron, but Kieran - Kieran, who has always been the toughest of the four, always looking out for them all, always ready to die for them - sneers.

As he prepares to leave, Éile tells him that if Arthur ever needs them, he knows where to find them. Kieran will come round, she says. Just give him time.

Arthur holds her tight, and takes Francis' hand as they leave the mountains.

The taste of animal blood is repulsive, after hundreds of years spent living off humans.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," berates Francis as Arthur gags over the liquid.

Arthur drinks it anyway, and the slight sense of approval he sees in Francis' eyes encourages him to do so in the future.

"I love you."

"I... uh... I'm hungry."

Somewhere along the line, Arthur sees a child struggling to outrun a bear. The kid, blue eyes big and terrified, relax as soon as Arthur sweeps him up in his arms and carries him to safety, and he stammers out a nervous thank-you.

Arthur finds he likes the feeling of doing well for someone other than himself, and when he tells Francis, the Frenchman merely smiles.

Francis is the only person who calls him Arcturus. Arthur calls him a frog.

Francis has a large family. All of them are younger than him, but Arthur is technically the age of the second-oldest "child". When Arthur meets the other five, they immediately start calling him Mum.

(How, exactly, a Frenchman and a Briton can produce a Spaniard, a Slav, a Prussian, an Austrian, and a Hungarian, Arthur does not know, but even though Antonio is about as bearable as a human infant, the lot of them grow on him, and he's okay with that.)

A/N: As you can see, it's totally different from the original version of Arthur's story - and for good reasons. You'll find out in Lampshade. ;)

notes:

1. Arthur is called Arcturus by Mother because she is indeed Roman, corresponding to the period of time where the Romans dominated most of Britain; Arcturus, the brightest star in the Ursa Major constellation (the great bear), was named by the Ancient Greeks and also used by Roman astrologers, and is a potential root of the modern name Arthur.

2. Kieran = Scotland; the name Kieran is spelled differently in Gaelic and Scottish, but I decided I'd just anglicize it anyway lol. Éile = Ireland; that's a traditional Irish name, according to various sites. Aeron = Wales; that's the masculine version of the name of a goddess.

3. No names from Before, because I didn't want to have to use weird names. Maybe they're all children of the forest and they don't need names or something? Idk, just don't think too much on that lololol