Hello
England takes a seat in front of the scarecrow, cross legged on the dry, bare ground. It's been a cool winter so far, with little rain. He ignores the chills that travel up his spine and watches, and thinks, and listens to the wind whistling over the ground.
He thinks of Aliens and robots and queens and kings, invasions and deaths, births and losses, love and lust, fury and cold, clinical logic.
He ponders years that never were and magic, faeries, his brothers, his children, his Doctor. When the feeling takes him he muses aloud, to the listener in front of him, not waiting for replies which would never come, his mind flicking between thoughts so quickly his tongue can barely keep up.
He talks of adventure and excitement, terror and adrenaline causing his slow heart to feel like it would burst with joy at finally living.
He talks of a day when all the nations bar him disappeared, and he had only two children left, and a laugh that nearly killed him.
He talks of his saviours, his friends, his loneliness and the dread that grips him. He talks of Christmas, and his invasions throughout time, and he sighs.
He talks of magic and witches.
Monsters and humans and those who aren’t either and the things he has met, and the people he has seen, the sights the sounds the smells the vivid colours of a flawless memory.
And he watches the sun arc over his head and after all these sun rises and sunsets it feels like it’s racing from one to the other so fast that time streams past like the wind across flat ground.
He talks about Torchwood and UNIT, classified files and Captain Jack, military affairs and his pride and his shame and horror and love for what his people have done for him. He talks of what he has done for them. He talks of the castaways and waifs he has taken it.
He speaks of forgiveness.
Of forgiving the ones who hurt you, the ones who made you who you were.
He talks of forgiving yourself, of learning to bear what you have done, and God does he have a lot to bear on his shoulders, so much war and bloodshed and doing what hurt others, even though it had already been done to him, and he is so, so desperately old that he ought to know better.
He talks of the Doctor. He talks of forgiving him for what he has done, his lovely brilliant Doctor and saviour so cold and cruel and punishing, eternal and mortal and spinning through time.
More regal than royalty, healer and man and when England first saw him he thought that he was a God. Nowadays his mind still toys with that suspicion, a God and his companion prophets
And two Devils, a cold, crippled creator and a genius with drumbeats in his brain.
He wants so desperately to forgive the Doctor. But he remembers that he is not human. He was human, he could’ve been, but in the end he never truly was.
He does not blame the scarecrow, the girl in the mirror or the Father or the Mother.
He blames nobody. He does not now who to, how to.
He stands.
Brushes the dust off his jeans.
Stretches.
Relaxes.
His mind starts to wander already, thinking of a shower and paperwork and rest and sleep.
He stands still for a moment longer. Pretends that maybe he can hear something in the whistle of the wind, past the watcher, across the cold dry ground, a siren or a sigh or a whisper. But he is merely deceiving himself.
He looks at the scarecrow, looks him right in the eye. His voice is not as strong as he would like.
“Goodbye. I’ll visit you soon, I suppose. Thank you for listening”.
He does not smile; it would be forced.
England turns and walks towards his home and ignores the tightness in his throat
And the scarecrow sways in the breeze, watching over the land that streches to the horizon and beyond, protector of England's green fields for all eternity.