Always [England & Scotland]
Title: Always
Author: thoughtscrime
Characters: England and Scotland, mentions of other brothers
Rating: PG?
Warnings: Brother bullying? Also I don't have any headcanon on Scotland so enjoy some kids.
Description: alfredishere on tumblr asked for "England, Scotland - Childhood!" as a drabble-request so here have it.
They’d always teased him. All of them. If you could call teasing getting rocks thrown at your head and being chased until you ran so far south you were nearly at the ocean again.
After all, it wasn’t his fault that the newcomers had called him Albion, not the collection of brothers that made up the island itself. He’d only looked at them dumbfounded (they were so tall-) and shuddered when suddenly he could feel two sets of eyes boring into his back as if they were burning sticks, branding him with their gaze.
That night he’d caught the worst of it. They stripped him, holding him down into the dirt, setting his clothes within eyesight but out of reach as they tied him to a tree deep, deep in the forest. It was the sort of prank that he was used to by now, but there was something different in their voices - something that nearly had a taste, like the bitterness of roots. They said they’d leave him for the fairies to find and save - or if they were lucky, take away with them. He struggled uselessly - it didn’t matter. He was the smallest. He’d always be the smallest, and despite trying so, so hard, he cried angry, frightened tears as he fought them, sniffling into the cold silent night as they left him, exposed to nature and those fairies that did not come, not even to comfort him.
Perhaps he did deserve it. He’d done something, right? He had to have, for them to treat him this way. And yet he couldn’t understand. It hurt.
And then the breaking of twigs underneath feet. The boy who would one day far in the future become a great empire shrank back into the rough bark, senses hyper and alert for a figure he could only hear and not see, assuming it was something that had smelled his fear and loneliness and come to eat him. When something brushed his immobile hands, he cried out and didn’t even care that it should be embarrassing, instead mumbling muddled prayers to anything that would listen under his breath. But they were hands upon his hands - not fairy hands, just the hands of a person, working at those knots until he was loosed to collapse upon the ground, knees weak. Again, he backed up into the tree, cradling his own aching wrists, afraid to look up even as a shadow fell upon him in the moonlight and his chin was lifted, forcing eyes to green, green eyes. The boy’s jaw set in anger, in wild fear as he sprang to his small, calloused feet and lept upon his taller brother, beating him with fists that wouldn’t bruise, yelling in desperation until those weak wrists were clutched and held and he writhed, naked as a beast, resorting to gnashing teeth and trying to capture flesh within.
“Calm down, lad- I saved ya, didn’t I?”
It didn’t help, but the voice that signed and slipped into song afteward did. It should have been sung by a mother - a mother the boys never had. He stilled, stared, and collapsed into a miserable pile onto his brother’s chest, sobbing from exhausted fright into the rough fabric of the other’s shirt. He didn’t want this strife, this constant bullying. He wanted this - his hair stroked in the moonlight, his brother’s voice in his ear, soothing him until tears faded to soft, calm breaths.
The song ended, but the careful stroking of hair did not. “Y’know. Whatever happens- we’ll always be together. Always.” The boy merely nodded against that heartbeat beneath him, wiping his nose on his own wrist, and with a small, quiet voice, repeated.
“Always.”
Author: thoughtscrime
Characters: England and Scotland, mentions of other brothers
Rating: PG?
Warnings: Brother bullying? Also I don't have any headcanon on Scotland so enjoy some kids.
Description: alfredishere on tumblr asked for "England, Scotland - Childhood!" as a drabble-request so here have it.
They’d always teased him. All of them. If you could call teasing getting rocks thrown at your head and being chased until you ran so far south you were nearly at the ocean again.
After all, it wasn’t his fault that the newcomers had called him Albion, not the collection of brothers that made up the island itself. He’d only looked at them dumbfounded (they were so tall-) and shuddered when suddenly he could feel two sets of eyes boring into his back as if they were burning sticks, branding him with their gaze.
That night he’d caught the worst of it. They stripped him, holding him down into the dirt, setting his clothes within eyesight but out of reach as they tied him to a tree deep, deep in the forest. It was the sort of prank that he was used to by now, but there was something different in their voices - something that nearly had a taste, like the bitterness of roots. They said they’d leave him for the fairies to find and save - or if they were lucky, take away with them. He struggled uselessly - it didn’t matter. He was the smallest. He’d always be the smallest, and despite trying so, so hard, he cried angry, frightened tears as he fought them, sniffling into the cold silent night as they left him, exposed to nature and those fairies that did not come, not even to comfort him.
Perhaps he did deserve it. He’d done something, right? He had to have, for them to treat him this way. And yet he couldn’t understand. It hurt.
And then the breaking of twigs underneath feet. The boy who would one day far in the future become a great empire shrank back into the rough bark, senses hyper and alert for a figure he could only hear and not see, assuming it was something that had smelled his fear and loneliness and come to eat him. When something brushed his immobile hands, he cried out and didn’t even care that it should be embarrassing, instead mumbling muddled prayers to anything that would listen under his breath. But they were hands upon his hands - not fairy hands, just the hands of a person, working at those knots until he was loosed to collapse upon the ground, knees weak. Again, he backed up into the tree, cradling his own aching wrists, afraid to look up even as a shadow fell upon him in the moonlight and his chin was lifted, forcing eyes to green, green eyes. The boy’s jaw set in anger, in wild fear as he sprang to his small, calloused feet and lept upon his taller brother, beating him with fists that wouldn’t bruise, yelling in desperation until those weak wrists were clutched and held and he writhed, naked as a beast, resorting to gnashing teeth and trying to capture flesh within.
“Calm down, lad- I saved ya, didn’t I?”
It didn’t help, but the voice that signed and slipped into song afteward did. It should have been sung by a mother - a mother the boys never had. He stilled, stared, and collapsed into a miserable pile onto his brother’s chest, sobbing from exhausted fright into the rough fabric of the other’s shirt. He didn’t want this strife, this constant bullying. He wanted this - his hair stroked in the moonlight, his brother’s voice in his ear, soothing him until tears faded to soft, calm breaths.
The song ended, but the careful stroking of hair did not. “Y’know. Whatever happens- we’ll always be together. Always.” The boy merely nodded against that heartbeat beneath him, wiping his nose on his own wrist, and with a small, quiet voice, repeated.
“Always.”