Work Text:
Telegram to Arthur Kirkland from Alfred F. Jones
HOW IS WAR QUERY AFJ
Telegram to Alfred F Jones from Arthur Kirkland
WAR QUIET STOP IN TALKS WITH FRANCE
Telegram to Francis Bonnefoy from Alfred F. Jones
HOW IS WAR QUERY AFJ
Telegram to Alfred F. Jones from Francis Bonnefoy
CHAMBERLAIN DIFFICULT STOP SPEAKING TO YOUR FATHER
Telegram to Matthew Williams from Alfred F. Jones
EURO WAR WORRIES ME STOP
Telegram to Alfred F. Jones from Matthew Williams
ME TOO BUT PAPA SAYS NOT TO WORRY
Telegram to Arthur Kirkland from Francis Bonnefoy
PERFIDIOUS ALBION
Telegram to Francis Bonnefoy from Arthur Kirkland
HANG IN THERE
Telegram to Arthur Kirkland from Francis Bonnefoy
GOING BADLY
Telegram to Francis Bonnefoy from Arthur Kirkland
DOING EVERYTHING I CAN STOP KEEP HANGING IN
Telegram to Matthew Williams from Francis Bonnefoy
I LOVE YOU WHATEVER HAPPENS
Telegram to Alfred F. Jones from Matthew Williams
PAPA NOT OKAY STOP AM ASKING TO GO OVERSEAS AND HELP
Telegram to Matthew Williams from Arthur Kirkland
FRANCE HAS FALLEN STOP HAVE SPOKEN TO FRANCIS STOP HE IS ALIVE STOP SENDS LOVE STOP
Telegram to Alfred F. Jones from Arthur Kirkland
FRANCE HAS FALLEN STOP HAVE SPOKEN TO FRANCIS STOP HE IS ALIVE STOP SENDS LOVE STOP
Telegram to Matthew Williams from Alfred F. Jones
NEED FAVOR
Journal entries of Arthur Kirkland
September 7, 1940
Air raid tonight. This is the start. Death toll unknown, bodies have not been counted, but I went out and saw two in a collapsed house. There is a general air of shock and horror.
September 8, 1940
Sirens again tonight. 9 civilians in my Anderson shelter, 2 of them children. Morale was kept up by their play.
September 9, 1940
Sirens. If they think they will break us this way they are wrong. We are prepared for a long war.
September 29, 1940
Underground now being used for shelter and medical operations. I am directing the neighbours to use my shelter and will spend the raids in the Underground.
Arthur Kirkland has many faults, but laziness is not one of them. On October 14th Arthur is in the old station in Kentish Town setting up cots when the air ride sirens start wailing. As predicted. Over a month of bombings and they’re still going strong. The raid tonight is close, the explosions shaking the ground. The station has become something of an air raid shelter itself, with people setting up their beds inside and taking the Tube to work. They are beginning to live like moles, some of them. Outside there is a crack and screaming, such screaming Arthur has rarely heard. He sprints outside to help, to do something, anything.
There is a woman, one of the ladies of the ambulance service, a nurse, standing in the street pointing up. “Look! A plane! It is on fire!”
Arthur looks and feels his heart contort in his chest. The plane is careening dangerously close to the ground, unsteady like a colt, and is giving off a trail of acrid smoke. It is a Hurricane, a British plane. The RAF, fighting against the German bombers.
“You should go into the shelter,” Arthur recommends, and returns his attention to the plane. It is undoubtedly going to crash. It looks as though the pilot is aiming for-
Hampstead Heath.
That’s near enough.
“Never mind,” he hisses.
“I have my truck here,” she says. “No dispatch, but I can see what I can do for him.”
“Take me,” says Arthur, who has already decided. She looks uncertain.
“I was a field medic during the first war,” he tells her.
“You hardly look old enough,” she says doubtfully, “but go on then.” She calls in to tell command they’re needed while Arthur prepares the ambulance.
The streets of London are blackout-dark, but Arthur knows them like the back of his hand and the nurse does too. They drive as fast as possible to the edge of the wooded area.
“There,” says Arthur, pointing to the plane where it lies a smoldering wreck propped up on a bush.
“He may still be alive,” says the nurse, and she and Arthur leap out of the ambulance to get a closer look. Up close the stench of oil and hot metal clogs his nose and the hairs on his arms stand up, prickling with unease. The metal frame of the plane is riddled with holes and warped.
Something moves.
There is an arm and then a booted foot and then a knee and then the pilot is scrabbling for a proper hold on something. Arthur reaches out and takes his gloved hand. Straining, he tries to pull him from the wreckage, slipping back and falling with the effort, but the extra momentum helps and the pilot’s body slips free.
The pilot coughs. “Thanks,” he says, in an American accent.
Arthur would know that voice anywhere.
His insides feel leaden with horror as he looks at the pilot’s face and processes what his heart already knows. He is looking at the bloodstained face of his firstborn son.
Alfred’s eyes widen in shock. He had not been expecting Arthur either.
“Alfred,” Arthur breathes, and scans him for injuries. His left arm is hanging at an odd angle, and one of his trouser legs is damp.
Not damp.
Soaked through with blood.
“Hey,” says Alfred.
He looks pale. Pallid. It is wrong to see him like this, Alfred who is usually so full of energy, Alfred who has grown so fast, Alfred who has taken to strutting around as if he is the main character of the world, Alfred who had only a few hundred years ago been a tiny child sobbing in Arthur’s arms. Alfred is taller than he is now.
Alfred’s eyelids droop.
“Stay with me!” Arthur snarls, and Alfred blinks up at him.
“Help me roll him onto the stretcher,” says the nurse, and so Arthur takes Alfred’s head and holds it still. On his count they roll Alfred onto his side, shunt the stretcher underneath, and roll him back on top of it. Alfred groans in pain.
“Let’s get you loaded up,” says the nurse in a no-nonsense tone. They lift Alfred and carry him in a wide circle around the smoldering wreckage of his plane to the ambulance. Once he’s in the back, the nurse locks eyes with Arthur. “Can you handle him?”
“I’ve got him. You drive,” says Arthur. “Fast.”
“Always do,” she replies.
Arthur flings a blanket over Alfred’s chest and cuts off Alfred’s trouser leg. “I’m just getting a better look,” he explains. Once he peels away the bloodsoaked fabric he can see a deep laceration in Alfred’s shin, still steadily bleeding.
Bleeding. Right. Pressure. Arthur presses gauze against the wound, holding pressure.
“Is it bad?” Alfred asks. His voice sounds strained.
“It’s under control,” says Arthur, and hopes he isn’t lying. You aren’t supposed to make promises to patients in these situations, he knows. But this isn’t just any patient. This is Alfred. Alfred.
His baby.
Arthur adds more gauze and wraps the wound tightly. He can then turn his attention to the rest of Alfred’s battered body. His arm is scratched, but the cuts aren’t deep. At least there are small mercies in the universe. It’s also dislocated. “This is going to hurt,” he warns, and then pops it back into place. Alfred lets out a pained noise from between gritted teeth. “I’m sorry,” Arthur tells him.
When they come to a halt the nurse comes around to the back to help lift Alfred out. Once he’s safely ensconced in the protected Tube station she dresses the wound on his leg properly, but before she can see to his arm a messenger comes running up to her and tells her something urgently.
She looks horrified. Arthur is desperate to know what happened.
“There’s been a terrible incident. They’re mobilizing my full team. I’ve got to…”
“Of course,” says Arthur.
These are dark times, dark nights when anything could happen and anyone could die. The threat of the Luftwaffe is constant. Already the landscape of his beloved London is scarred and the bombers show no signs of stopping. Arthur’s heart aches for his people, and stutters because of the bombs themselves. There is nothing to be done but endure.
Alfred…
“You were supposed to be safe in America,” Arthur tells his firstborn, dressing the wounds on his arm. If Alfred had been a human child he would have sent him to the countryside a year ago. Alfred is not a human child, though, and he had declared Arthur had no authority over him over a century and a half ago. Alfred is a proper country now, no longer Arthur’s little Thirteen, all the way on the other side of the Atlantic, shores the war has not yet reached. The United States has not even entered the war, as much as they’ve been urged to.
Arthur favors American assistance, Arthur is keen on any assistance they can get in these troubled times, but not at the cost of Alfred’s life. Never at the cost of Alfred’s life. He had not meant that. Alfred should be in Washington, where he lives. He should not be bleeding in front of Arthur.
“Mattie thought you weren’t safe here,” says Alfred.
Arthur lets out a bitter chuckle and starts wiping off his son’s face. “So you came to save me?”
“Yes,” says Alfred insistantly. It’s the last thing he says before he falls asleep.
He looks more vulnerable asleep, somehow. Younger. His face, washed clean of debris and blood, still looks the way he had in the 1700s before everything went wrong. He has a trusting expression when he sleeps that he does not always wear when awake. Arthur would like to fight whoever taught him the world was cruel, but he knows he himself is the culprit.
He paces at Alfred’s side. Why has he come here? Foolish, foolish boy.
Alfred stirs in the early hours of the morning. He grimaces, and Arthur rests his hand on his forehead by instinct. He’s warm.
“Are you well enough to walk?” he asks when Alfred properly wakes up later.
“No good morning?” grumbles Alfred. “Let’s see.” He pushes himself up off the cot he’s been on. He gags and swallows thickly.
“It’s all right if not,” clarifies Arthur, “but I’d rather get you home.”
“Home,” Alfred echoes, sitting back down.
“On the Tube,” Arthur specifies.
Alfred frowns at him. “The Tube is running?”
“Yes,” says Arthur lightly. “Can you imagine London without the Tube?”
Alfred does not respond. “We’ll get on the next train,” Arthur decides. Alfred will just have to manage. He does not want him hanging around the station in his state, and besides, he needs new clothes. People will ask too many questions about this teenager wearing a tattered RAF uniform.
“Old man, commuting to an air raid,” says Alfred.
The telltale rumbling of the train precludes its arrival. “Get ready.”
Alfred hauls himself up properly, wincing when he puts weight on his injured leg. Arthur slings his arm over his shoulders to help support him. “Come on.”
Alfred has grown since they last met face to face, Arthur realises. He is taller. He had not known Alfred was still growing, though the boy certainly seems young enough to him. He is a baby, really. Barely three hundred years old and already tall enough to be an adult. At his age, chronologically speaking, Arthur is certain he had only been a toddler.
They had grown so slowly in those days. Now many of the old guard are gone. The great empires of the old world have crumbled, save China which is fending off Japan in the Pacific, and their successors are tearing each other apart in endless wars encircling the globe. France has fallen, though Arthur has Francis’s word that he will not give up and he knows that he will not give up on Francis until his last dying breath, and England will not give up on France until it is eviscerated. Ethiopia, one of the oldest of their kind, is in the unstable hands of Italy.
Arthur is relieved when he can cling to a support pole. Alfred is heavy. The first of the commuters join them in the compartment, and although Alfred gets a few curious glances, for the most part people mind their own business. This tendency is one of the things Arthur likes about his people. They can get on with their lives.
They emerge from the Tube station in Westminster. Alfred makes a strangled sort of noise as they emerge into the harsh morning light, and pitches to the side while his stomach empties itself of its contents. All Arthur can do is take as much of his weight as he can and rub him awkwardly on the back.
“Sorry,” said Alfred.
“It’s all right, lovey,” he says absentmindedly. Alfred trembles a little. Arthur urges him on, and soon they’re turning the corner and they’re in front of the brick house on Cowley Street.
“I’ve been here before,” says Alfred. And he has, of course he has. Arthur had bought this house new in the 1720s. He had liked the convenient location and he had thought it a nice place to raise his son. Alfred at 100 had been a child old enough to have been breeched for several years, although Arthur had kept him in dresses and not cut his curls for as long as he could justify it.
The house they are entering together is the house they had lived in when they were not in America in the decades leading up to Alfred’s rebellion. It is distinctly odd, then, for Arthur to lift his son across the threshold with the king’s crown emblem on his chest.
He does not bother taking Alfred up the stairs. The parlour on the ground floor will do just fine, he decides, and helps him to the sofa, a Chippendale.
Alfred has started bleeding again. Arthur stifles a sigh and fetches his kit. “I’m going to undress you,” he warns.
“I can do it myself,” says Alfred.
“All right,” Arthur says, and steps away to allow him some privacy. He can hear Alfred’s muffled yelps of pain and the sound of fabric rustling and then a wet smacking sound. “Alfred?” he calls, concerned.
“D’you have - I’m naked!”
Arthur brings him a towel, figuring he’s going to need to clean it, and after a moment’s reflection brings along a warm blanket and a set of loose pyjamas. They’ll be a bit short for Alfred, but they’re more likely to fit him than his old clothes are, still in the closet upstairs. Passing through the kitchen, he puts the kettle on.
He tosses Alfed the towel so he can cover himself with it. “You can look,” says Alfred.
He is not bleeding too badly, Arthur decides, but he resolves to put the new bandage on even more tightly than the last. In proper light he looks quite burnt, the skin of his leg pink and tender, with some bubbling blisters starting to emerge. He needs to wash this, and tells Alfred as much.
The kettle starts to whistle its cheerful shrill sound, and Arthur pours the first kettleful of water into a basin with some cold water from the tap to cool it down to a reasonable temperature. He adds a bit of soap, a slice of something with roses on the label from Lafayette Parfumeur, a gift from Francis, something entirely too posh to be used like this but there is no sense in being precious with soap these days. He refills the kettle and puts it back on the heat before going back to Alfred with the basin and a washcloth folded over his arm.
He dips the washcloth into the basin and wrings it out. When he pulls it along Alfred’s leg, the American hisses in pain. “I know, I’m sorry,” he says. “It has to be done.”
When he is finished cleaning Alfred’s leg and replacing the bandage, it looks even redder and angrier. A surprising–or not so surprising, given Alfred has come from a plane crash– amount of dirt and dried blood has come off him. “You were mucky,” he says reprovingly, and turns his attentions to Alfred’s other leg, which is fortunately less burnt and intact.
Alfred permits him to wash off his torso, as well, which is blooming purple with bruises. Arthur places his hands on either side of his ribcage and asks him to breathe. Alfred is lucky, his chest inflates bilaterally and none of his ribs seem broken. It is just a touch of internal bleeding. Arthur mentally scoffs. Just a touch of internal bleeding, that’s all! Not as if Alfred needs his internal sodding organs!
He washes Alfred’s back, which is similarly bruised, and his face, which despite everything, is still Arthur’s baby’s face, still the eyes of the baby he’d had so many years ago, the eyes of the son he’d bought this house for. He helps Alfred slip into the pyjamas. They are cotton and breathable. He props him up with pillows and covers his legs with the blanket. “Comfortable?”
“All right,” says Alfred.
The pyjamas are monogrammed. Arthur had forgotten about that. On the breast pocket, in poisonous green, are the initials AK.
Alfred Kirkland is in his parlour again after all these years.
Except he isn’t, and he had renounced Arthur’s name a long time ago. They are on better terms nowadays, but they are not as close as they once were. The First World War, because this is a second one, now– and it is a sickening thought, two world wars in thirty years– had helped, oddly enough, fighting on the same side and risking everything. Alfred had held affairs in the early 1810s against Arthur personally for a long time after diplomatic relations had been restored. Arthur had begun writing to him, first apologizing, then pleading, and half his letters had gone unsent and most of the other half were left unanswered. Alfred had only really started responding in the forties when they had a border dispute, and then it had been scant. He’d mostly asked about Matthew, his twin brother and Arthur’s second son, but he’d been curious about Arthur’s other children too.
The whistle of the kettle wails in the kitchen. “Back in a minute,” he says. When he returns, it’s with two mugs of tea. He offers one to Alfred.
His son grasps it in two hands. “I don’t drink tea these days,” he says, sort of numbly.
“Oh,” says Arthur, feeling like a bit of a lump. Alfred had enjoyed tea when he had been a child. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s…” Alfred takes a sip. “Hot.”
“It’s tea,” says Arthur. What does he expect, really? Of course it’s hot.
Alfred shrugs, taking care not to spill his tea. “It’s usually iced in America. And black.”
Arthur doesn’t think twice these days about putting a slug of milk in with his tea. That’s the way they’d started doing it when tea first came to England with the Dutch, and the way he’d continued doing it even after Yao showed him how a tea bowl worked.
“Iced,” says Arthur, and he doesn’t mean his tone to be judgmental but the word comes out wrong, and there is a flash of hurt on Alfred’s face. He has blundered. “It’s just different, I suppose.”
“It’s hot in America,” says Alfred. “In the south. That’s where the good tea is.”
“I suppose it is,” says Arthur. Virginia is in the south, he thinks. He and Alfred had lived in Virginia. Alfred is from Virginia. Alfred had been Jamestown once upon a time. Perhaps, he thinks, that is why they like tea there, some deeply held memory of a father figure rooted in the soil calling back to days past. Perhaps Alfred is more like Arthur than he will admit out loud. Even if the tea is iced. “What do you drink these days, then?”
“Coffee,” says Alfred.
“Of course,” says Arthur. “Coffee.”
Silence hangs between them while Alfred sips his tea, more tentatively than Arthur. He is glad to see the boy getting some fluids. He has lost what seems like an awful lot of blood recently. “Why did you come here?” Arthur asks at last, holding his mug in his lap.
“Mattie was worried about you,” Alfred says after a moment’s hesitation.
“And he couldn’t come himself?” Matthew is just as old as Alfred and just as competent.
“He came too,” Alfred admits quietly.
Arthur’s hands tremble so much he spills a bit of tea onto his thigh. It is warm and slightly sticky soaking through his trousers there. Both his boys? Both his boys have come to this place during this godforsaken war? Neither of them had asked. Canada at least is officially at war, unlike America, but Arthur had hoped Matthew would focus on manufacturing and on sending troops over. He hadn’t wanted… hadn’t ever wanted his sons to send themselves. They hadn’t even told him they were coming.
“Where is he?” Arthur asks, hoping desperately that Matthew has not gone and flown over occupied France. It is just the sort of thing he expects from Alfred, but not from Matthew. Matthew has always been so sensible.
“On the ground,” says Alfred, and Arthur feels a rush of gratitude for Matthew’s calm disposition. It is surely responsible for his staying anchored to England while his brother had plunged down like Icarus. “He is working with command in Yorkshire.”
Arthur makes a mental note to summon his younger son to explain himself. “I’m glad you are both safe,” he says.
Alfred’s face twists. “Yeah,” he says.
Arthur has a sip of tea. “I suppose you ought to eat something. Are you hungry?”
Alfred hums. “I hurt.”
“I know,” says Arthur. “I could do you porridge.”
“All right,” says Alfred.
“Well. I’ll go and do that. You finish your tea.” Arthur takes his own mug into the kitchen. Making porridge. For Alfred. For his son. The food will get his spirits up, hopefully. Alfred has seemed so quiet and unnaturally timid. Perhaps it’s the blood loss, perhaps it’s the shock of crash-landing in London, perhaps it’s this house.
Alfred has always had a big appetite, Arthur remembers, so he’s rather liberal with the oats. Oats are easy to get, in any case. He makes it with plenty of milk, so it’s nice and creamy. The milk jug feels light in his hand. He’ll have to be a bit scarce with his own milk, then, to make up for it, but that’s all right. He can manage. He’s good at managing. He puts a splash of milk in the bowl of porridge when it’s finished, to make a moat, and sprinkles a bit of sugar onto the top. Looking at it he feels rather silly. Alfred isn’t a child. He does not need to be coaxed and prodded and convinced to eat his porridge with a moat around it like a castle. Alfred is an adult, for better and for worse.
Arthur carries the porridge into the drawing room. Alfred is staring at something on the wall. He looks over to see it is the portrait he and Francis had done in 1716. They had had business, an alliance had been concluded, and they had wanted to commemorate the occasion. Francis had brought Matthew along, because Matthew was still New France then, and Arthur had brought Alfred. In the portrait Arthur has his hand on the top of Alfred’s head, as if blessing him or ruffling his hair or pushing him down. Alfred and Matthew, both young boys, are looking at each other as if they share a secret. Francis and Arthur are close together, and Francis has one hand on little Matthew’s shoulder. His other hand is hidden. It had been on the small of his back, Arthur remembered, Francis had taken too many liberties. The painter had not captured that.
That must have been the size Alfred had been when they’d moved into this house. “I remember when we had that done,” he says, because it feels wrong not to say anything.
At the same time Alfred speaks. “How is France?”
Arthur feels the warm flush of embarrassment prickle at his skin. He passes the bowl of porridge to Alfred and realises he has forgotten the spoon. How foolish. He nips back to the kitchen to get one, a little silver spoon so like the others he keeps in a closed box in his desk, only plainer, and returns to Alfred. “He’s… unwell, as you know, but holding up. We’ll have a proper resistance going soon.”
“You’ve seen him?” Alfred is still looking at the portrait. They had been strong, then, stronger than Arthur feels now and stronger than Francis is, overrun with jerries and his collaborator government.
“He went back,” admits Arthur, “but he was holding up.”
“Mattie will be glad,” says Alfred. “He would hate to lose both of you.”
“And you?” Arthur finds himself asking, against his better judgment.
Alfred’s voice is muffled by the porridge in his mouth. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
And that is the problem. He’s here and he shouldn’t be, he’s here and he’s injured. “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Arthur chides.
“Didn’t think you’d’ve that picture up,” says Alfred, disregarding him.
“Francis likes it,” says Arthur. It had been Francis’s idea to put it up in 1904, and Arthur hadn’t stopped him. Perhaps he’d even liked the idea.
“Course he does. Baby Mattie.”
Arthur has finished his tea. “Yes, I suppose. Well, I really must get to work.”
“Work?”
“It’s a tricky business, war,” says Arthur. It’s much more complicated than it used to be. Still, in some ways things have improved. The invention of the radio has helped. “I’ll be in my study.” He has a number of reports to look through, mainly in regards to preparation on the Home Front. The ambulances seem to be getting on all right, and he hopes to see the same of the Home Guard.
Arthur’s study is the same it’s always been, save for the addition of a modern map. He’s got a painting on the wall, a coastal scene from Dorset, a tapestry he’d been given by one of his brothers, and a map of the Empire at its peak. The bookshelf behind his desk has a number of old folios. There’s a wooden box on the bottom shelf gathering dust that he tries not to look at, but he finds himself eyeing it anyway. He knows what he would find if he opened it. He doesn’t need to see it.
He phones the Prime Minister and checks in. There has been, he learns, a terrible accident with a bomb and a bus and a station full of people. His people. He isn’t entirely surprised. He can feel it if he taps into it, a patch of fresh grief, but there is so much these days that it hadn’t necessarily seemed unusual. Every night is a tragedy.
He finds himself staring at the door. Alfred is out there. Alfred is even now lying on the sofa in the drawing room.
Sighing, he picks up a stack of papers and goes to sit with him.
Alfred has not finished his porridge. He has not even eaten half of it. He has set the bowl off to the side, at least, and is fiddling with the hem of the blanket he’s under. “I’m bored,” he complains. “I have a headache.”
“Probably because you got shot down,” says Arthur, but the boy’s eyes do look rather blown. “Follow my finger.” He holds one finger in front of Alfred’s eyes and moves it to one side and then to the other. His eyes are slow to follow.
By noon Alfred’s condition has deteriorated further. He looks small and scared and ill and all Arthur can do is watch. He seems to be falling asleep, which is good, he needs the rest. Nations heal faster than humans, but it is not overnight. Alfred will have to spend at least a good week recovering. There’s something up with his head, and given how fast his body will want to heal itself, his conscious mind will not be its priority.
Alfred jerks suddenly. “Father!”
Father.
Alfred has not called Arthur that for the better part of two hundred years.
“Alfred,” Arthur says, and then, “I am here,” because what is he supposed to do? Alfred is his son.
“Father,” says Alfred, and there are tears in his eyes. Alfred, as a rule, does not cry. At least, not anymore. This is worrisome. “I fell out of the sky.”
“I know,” says Arthur, and his chest aches. “I’m sorry.”
“I needed to see you,” says Alfred, hiccuping.
Arthur kneels in front of him and takes his hand and squeezes it. “You’re at home now, lovey.”
“At home?”
Arthur runs a hand through Alfred’s hair. He feels sweaty. “Yes. I’m going to get you a drink of water, all right?”
“Don’t leave,” says Alfred.
Arthur presses a kiss to his temple. “I’m not leaving.”
He does leave, because Arthur always breaks his promises and he knows it, but it is only to get a cup of water. He holds it in front of Alfred. “Here.”
Alfred opens his mouth. All right then. Arthur brings the cup to his son’s lips and tilts it slightly. Alfred drinks quickly. What if he chokes? But he doesn’t.
Arthur sits with him for the rest of the day, work be damned, war be damned. By the time evening falls and the blackouts are up, Alfred looks more like himself, and he’s following Arthur around with his eyes.
“How are you doing, lovey?”
Alfred looks down. “Better.”
“Good.”
“What’re you doing?” He has perked up.
“Putting up the blackouts, so the Germans can’t see us,” he explains.
“Oh, right,” says Alfred, and falls quiet.
The next day Alfred seems to be a bit better. Arthur makes him toast, for breakfast, and he’s got a bit of jam so he slathers it in that. Alfred likes sugar. Alfred has always liked sugar.
The wound on Alfred’s leg is pink and angry. Arthur doesn’t like the look of it. “Does it hurt?” he asks.
“Of course it hurts,” says Alfred, a bit snappishly.
“All right,” says Arthur. “No need to take that tone with me.”
“You’re,” starts Alfred, and then stops and takes a bite of toast, smearing jam on his upper lip.
Anger is a reflex. Anger is a reflex and a vice, one that Arthur should not succumb to, so he storms to his office to sit by himself and maybe get some work done.
Half an hour later he feels more reasonable and goes to the medicine cabinet. Arthur has a nasty habit of not cleaning out his medicine cabinet, so it’s full of at least fifty years of various things from the chemist. Venos Cough Mixture, Beechams pills, Radithor, Camphor oil, chlorodyne and soothing syrup… which he should probably throw out, given he recognises the brand from a campaign against it because of the health risks. Turns out it’s not so good to give morphine to teething babies. Arthur counts himself lucky that his babies were always quasi-immortal, and even his youngest had never been so hard to soothe that he’d needed a dangerously large dose. Nothing bad had happened to any of his children as a result of the limited medical knowledge they’d had at the time. At least, as far as he knows.
There is a manky old jar in the cabinet. Perhaps he’s kept things in here for far longer than he really should, because he’s almost sure there’s a sad little dried leech in it. Gosh, when had they stopped using leeches? He supposes it must have been when he had most of the children, because there was one particular incident when he tried bloodletting with leeches on himself and one of them had been particularly enthralled by it.
Not that bloodletting will help Alfred, of course. His eldest has no particular fondness for things of that nature, and besides, Arthur would like to see his blood safely inside his body.
He gets out some aspirin. Nice and safe and modern, that.
“I brought you painkiller,” he tells Alfred awkwardly.
“Oh,” says Alfred. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Alfred takes the aspirin, and then looks anywhere but Arthur’s face. “Could you…”
“Mmm?”
“Could you stay? I’m bored.”
“Of course, lovey,” Arthur says. He’s got a report to work on, but it’s all by hand, mercifully, so he brings it in and sits across from Alfred. His bold, brave, foolish boy.
Alfred recovers in about a week. One of the many benefits to being a Nation is enhanced healing abilities when their people are strong, and the Americans certainly are.
“Much as I’d like to sit around drinking cups of tea,” Alfred says, waving a hand, “there are men dying out there, and I should be with them.”
“Not dying,” Arthur says, raising a bushy eyebrow.
“Not dying,” Alfred agrees. “Flying. Defending democracy and freedom.”
Arthur sighs. “It’s dangerous.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” Alfred scoffs. “You expect your people to do it.”
“I know. I wish they didn’t have to. Or I could do it for them.”
“Come with me,” Alfred says. “You could fly - you could get them to take you.”
Arthur shakes his head. “No, no, I should be here. With the people. It’s only right. I couldn’t leave, not while under fire.”
“I know,” says Alfred. “I understand.”
How can he? America, to Arthur’s knowledge, has not been attacked the way Britain has. The seat of Alfred’s government is not under fire from a foreign enemy. It hasn’t been in a hundred years, and, Arthur supposes, he was the foreign enemy then, and things were much different. It is not the same as this.
Sometimes he thinks they will never stop. Every breath he takes is like a precursor to an air raid siren, and his ears seem to be constantly ringing. The dread that grips his chest does not ease, but having his eldest around, and the familiar routine of looking after him is a welcome distraction, if nothing else.
He will miss having Alfred around.
“Visit when you’re on leave, if you can. And when it’s a less worrisome situation here… or when you can… do put in a good word for us with Mr. Roosevelt, eh?”
Alfred smiles. He has a cheeky smile, albeit a little more haunted than it once had been. Even so changed, it is Arthur’s little boy’s smile. “Will do,” he promises.
“I know you will.” Arthur claps him on the back.
Alfred catches his arm, and pulls it around himself, wrapping Arthur in a hug. He’s so tall, Arthur thinks, not for the first time, and he’s broadened into something of a strapping young man. Arthur has to turn his head to hold him. “I’m proud of you,” he says. Alfred squeezes him tighter the way he did when he was just a child. He is not a child any longer, though. He is a man, a young man, but old enough to make his own decisions. Old enough to fly with the RAF. Except…
“How is it that they let you fly when you’re not British?”
Alfred smiles that American smile of his again, bright white teeth flashing. “Told them I am, didn’t I? By descent. Jus sanguinis, I think you’ll find it’s called.”
“I know the law,” Arthur says. “But it’s…”
“It’s still awkward,” Alfred affirms.
Being long-lived may mean that Arthur has a lot of time. But sometimes a long life allows for more regrets, and he has many. His eldest son is chief among them. Not that he would ever regret having had Alfred. That is one of the unfortunate things about the whole matter. No matter how much pain it has caused - and oh, he regrets the pain! He regrets the pain, no doubt, but he could never regret Alfred.
Never. Alfred is his boy, as grown up as he may be.
“Will you pray for me?” Alfred asks.
Arthur is not a devout man. He had been, once, but so was everyone, and the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century have changed everything. He knows hell. It has stalked him since that awful day in 1814 when he had first become unforgivable and it had found him in the trenches and followed him home. Hell is the distance from his son he cannot make up and a charge over the edge that never ends and the endless wail of the air raid sirens. Arthur is not a devout man, even if he remembers his rites and goes to church on Sundays when he can.
But for Alfred…
“Yes,” he promises.
And his son walks away towards the fight.