A/N:
Okay! The final installment! Almost two weeks late but!!! It is finished!!! Please read and tell me how you liked it.
CW: there is suggestion in the beginning and end of the rape of a minor, and discussion of said rape. Then at the end Francis thinks little baby Arthur's coming onto him, but he's not, I promise. There might also be some slurs in here, but I forget off the top of my head what they are.
Forgive me, as I didn't attempt to put any accent marks on words that are in a foreign language. So... my bad.
And lastly, Arthur and Francis are acting as though they are adults, but though they've had many experiences in their long years, they still do not understand the world entirely, and their minds are young and largely innocent and kind.
So this is what Arthur is wearing to the club:
What Fran is wearing is, I would like to think, rather self-explanatory. So I won't offer pictures
Playlist for writing this chapter: Blackheart, by Two Steps From Hell; Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Lorde; Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons; Unpack Your Heart by Phillip Phillips; Between the Bars by Chris Garneau
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When you crawl in through the window, you didn't expect to see this. You'd heard of Albion's defeat at the hands of the Dane, but you couldn't imagine that things would progress this quickly. The boy lay curled up on dirtied, rumpled sheets, his naked shoulders lightly shaking. You can guess immediately what has transpired, even without seeing the blood on the sheets, and your chest constricts as if his fear and pain were your own. Truthfully, though, you are no stranger to this crude ritual, and so, much of your feeling is from experience.
"Oh, Albion..." You murmur quietly.
He doesn't respond. You creep over to him, sensing you've walked into something that, perhaps, you shouldn't have. Albion was always a crybaby, but this sort of reaction is expected after the small boy (surely no bigger than a seven year old) was violated in such a way.
"Albion?" You say his name again, softly, gently; you don't want to cause him undue stress after what he has been put through. You gently touch his shoulder, but he doesn't move. Now... this concerns you. You would have expected some sort of reaction... no matter how small. But... nothing.
You roll him over, and icy fear grabs your heart in an unforgiving hold. There are no tears, nothing, and he stares. He stares at everything and nothing, his eyes glazed over and lifeless. The only way you know the trauma hasn't killed him is the way his shoulders continue to shake, and how he makes the tiniest whimpers every so often.
"Albion," You croon softly. You can feel your heart breaking for him. "Albion, mon petit lapin[1], it's me, it's France."
You tuck a lock of long blond hair behind your ear - some of it must have come loose from the braid. You think he's slowly starting to respond to your prodding. He blinks once, and his eyes clear up a bit. Twice, and the green of his irises are bright, and he's looking at you alertly.
"France..." He murmurs, looking around himself, his gaze lingering particularly on the blooded sheets. His eyes widen, and he immediately scrambles to the side of the bed and heaves up the contents of his stomach. You frown, pulling his trembling body into your lap - he's really not much smaller than you, but you still think of him as a babe: that skittish, fat-cheeked little thing you met when Rome conquered Britannia.
"There there, hush, you're safe now." You gently coo at him, brushing shaggy, dirty blond hair from his sweaty forehead.
Big, fat tears begin slowly rolling down his cheeks, and soon he is sobbing in your arms and mussing your clothes with his tears. You delicately cringe at at the mess he's making of you, but it cannot be helped. You run your fingers through his hair, and he looks up at you. You are startled by the cold, hateful look in his big, childish eyes.
"I love them." He whispers, with a quaking breath. "I love them. I fought for them. I killed for them." His voice is rising in pitch and volume and he sits up in your lap. "But they only hurt me. They only want to cage me and hold onto me to do their petty bidding."
You are sad for him. He's learned the truth of it, this is for sure.
"I don't..." Albion chokes on his words, and after a moment tries again. "Does it hurt every time? What did... What did he do to me?"
It's such an innocent question, but you have to choke back your own tears for the boy.
"It's a very old practice..." You start. You have to pause and take a deep breath, but you see you have his attention, so you continue on. "What happened to you would be commonly called rape. In the simplest form, it involves... well, it involves someone's penis penetrating you - as it did - and you don't want that. For it to be rape, you cannot want it, and it causes a lot of pain and fear." While speaking from experience, you attempt to keep this explanation as clinical as possible. Also, as simple as possible.
Albion is looking up at you with those big eyes full of hurt, and you feel the weight of the humans' actions on your soul. You hold him closer, and you take a moment to feel blessed that he is letting you touch him like this after what he just went through. You think -- you hope -- that he really trusts you.
After a moment, he asks, "What kind of practice would hurt us so badly?"
Another quite innocent question, with a heavy answer.
"Eh bien[2], mon petite lapin, when you lose a battle and allow other nations to invade your own --"
"I didn't allow him!" Albion rears back and all but snarls.
You just smile sadly and nod. "Oui, I know you didn't." After taking a deep breath, you continue, choosing your words a bit more carefully now. "You see, for the situation of a successful invasion, humans created a tradition... It's all legend and lore for them, the way that we Nations function. But they think it is somehow connected to the status of our people and land. And they are not entirely wrong. You feel it when you are being attacked, do you not? When your people die, you feel every man woman and child that fall. So they are not wrong, Albion, only misguided. They do not see us dying or otherwise reacting when a successful invasion occurs. So they take it upon themselves to set us up in special rooms, and the invader penetrates the body of the loser to symbolize the invasion. Our dear humans have a strong belief that this must happen, and even fear it not occurring."
Albion frowns, and leans back against you. A good span of time passes and you nearly fall asleep against the plush pillows, but he begins speaking again, startling you.
"Our people..." He takes a deep breath, and speaks slowly. His voice is oddly blank and you can't see his face, so you're not entirely sure what might be going on in his mind. "Our people don't mean to hurt us."
"Non, mon cher[3], they don't. Most humans don't know that we exist."
"But the few that do. They hurt us because we're different."
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