Chapter Text
Francis snuck into Arthur’s house the next night- successfully, he may add- and navigated himself to Arthur’s reading room, for another account about himself and winter with Arthur. The journal was exactly where he left it last- in between the other various coloured journals on the bottom shelf. He picked it up and sat in the armchair beside the shelf, making himself comfy.
---
‘A man called William the Bastard (he really was one, I can confirm) decided it would be a good idea to claim his link to the throne of England after Edward the Confessor died. However, there was already a new king, Harold, so naturally, William declared war. There was a dramatic battle that took place at Hastings on October 1066. The victor was William, and after time, he conquered the rest of England and was crowned king in the earlier days of 1067.
So how does he tie in with one of my run-ins with Francis? Well, he was also the duke of Normandy, which happened to be part of France, thus keeping his French relations were a priority. In late November or so, he dragged me to a meeting with the king of France, possibly to show how powerful he was, when I saw a glimpse of a familiar shade of blonde hair. Of course, I had to stay put, but that didn’t deter me from finding out who it was.
-
Francis could see yet another memory page. On it was an impatient-looking Arthur who hadn’t looked like he aged. He was standing awkwardly near William the Conqueror, who was talking to one of the said dukes of France- whom Francis couldn’t remember the name of. Floating in the air a handful of metres away from England was a… A winged rabbit? ‘Ah. That must be Flying Mint Bunny.’ Francis realised. He smiled when he realised what this was and let the scene commenced.
-
“Psst! Flying Mint Bunny can you help me?” England hissed discreetly, looking around for the aforementioned animal. Soon enough, it popped up, flying around the child. “Hello, England! What’s wrong?” The bunny asked, noticing the very obvious fidgeting that England was doing.
“Do you remember how Gaul looked like?” he asked, eyes darting to the ground. Flying Mint Bunny nodded. “Yeah! Why?”
“Well, I thought I saw him. I don’t know whether it was him or not, but I can’t check. So can you…?” England trailed off awkwardly, looking at the flying animal. Mint Bunny only laughed and flew off. England took that as a yes. He lingered near his boss, as told, until Mint Bunny returned.
“England! It’s him!” It squeaked. England’s eyes widened.
“Where is he?” He hissed, eager to know. He hadn’t seen him for years- decades, even- so he was eager to talk to him again.
“I’m right here. Why, Albion, talking to the air? That’s very unlike you. But it seems you’ve taken up a new name. Was it England?” A voice asked, amused.
England spun around. “You! You still owe me a snowball fight!” He yelled, hitting the source of the voice. It screamed. “Yep, you’re Gaul, alright,” England concluded. “Only he screams like that.”
“Now that’s just mean,” he grumbled, rubbing the area where England punched him. “Mon Dieu that hurt!”
England’s boss and the current guy he was talking to turned to face the both. “Ah, England, It seems you’ve introduced yourself to France already,” William said airily. France grimaced.
“That is the understatement of the year,” He grumbled, only loud enough for England to hear. He giggled, making the others look at him weirdly. England ignored them and turned to France. “You’re called France now?” He asked.
“Took you long enough,” He teased, causing England to roll his eyes.
“Shut up, you prat,” He replied, but he was grinning. “At least I didn’t wait to see someone for a few hundred years.” France huffed at this.
“That could barely be helped. You can blame the Vikings for that.” He looked warily at England’s boss, who, luckily, didn’t hear him. England nodded in agreement.
“‘I’ve talked to one of them a few times when they weren’t raiding.” England piped up, trying to steer the conversation away from the sadder side of the raids that they both experienced. “He wasn’t too bad- he could see the fey people too.” France’s mouth quirked at this.
“Could he really now?” He asked skeptically.
“Yep. He said he was Norway.” England said in a matter-of-fact matter. “And he had this huge troll who would follow him around and stuff!” France’s smirk had formed into a genuine smile by then and allowed England to describe the rest of his escapades in detail. Neither one had realised that their bosses had left them in order to go inside.
-
‘After that re-encounter, Francis would tend to bug me even more than when we were Gaul and Albion, which always mystified me, seeing as he had ‘tons of nation stuff’ he needed to do (well that was how he put it whenever he ran off). I suppose it was then when we started to think things like ‘Damn it, France needs to visit me again,’ or for Francis’ case ‘Hmm, I need to bug Angleterre, don’t I? *insert froggy laugh here*’
We would talk about very general things, the latest wars and sometimes about other nations, but nothing too personal. It was common to know a country but not know their human name at that time, as a formality. Knowing their human name probably implied a close relationship between two countries. So when he and I exchanged names during the time when the Bubonic plague broke out, we truly thought we wouldn’t see each other again.’
Francis stopped at that and checked quickly as to whether Arthur had returned yet. When he affirmed to himself that he hadn’t, he continued, wanting to see the memory of that night.
'Now I won’t go into specifics because the things I saw at around 8 years old were quite traumatising, but everyone was dying. Every day I’d walk around town to find that at least one person had died. Francis’ visits started to reduce and we’d started to arrange places to meet in fear we caught the plague, even though we were both nations who would only die if all our citizens died. I suppose it was the paranoia of even finding a dead body which set us to do so.
We knew our people were dying, and as a pessimistic young nation who knew about the fall of countries, I was terrified. So it was up in our tree where I decided to blurt out my fears.’
-
England shifted on the branch, as France talked more about the prank he and Prussia set up on a duke’s wife. He kept fidgeting as France delved further into the story. France had caught up on this soon enough and stopped his narrative. “England. Are you okay?” He asked hesitantly, putting a hand on his shoulder. England didn’t move. “Angleterre?” France tried again.
He finally looked up, meeting France’s eyes. “What would happen if we died, France?” he said, softly. “What if one day we wake up and all there is is just an empty land?” France looked at England.
“What makes you think that? Isn’t that a bit dramatic?” He asked, trying to lighten it up a little. England looked at him.
“We’ve both seen it happen. What if it happened to us?” He challenged him. France sighed.
“Look, if you keep with these depressing thoughts, lapin, you’ll be in misery for a long time.”
“Yes, but,” England replied, “I don’t want to wake up and find out you’re gone.”
France smiled. “Nice to know that you do care for me after all,” He said teasingly. England scowled and huffed irritably.
“I try to open up to you, and this is what I get?” He complained, kicking the air.
“If it helps, I worry about you too,” France added hastily. “And even though I have Spain and Prussia, it wouldn’t be as interesting if you weren’t here.”
“Of course, it wouldn’t,” England said smugly, which in turn caused France to chuckle. “But if I died, no one would have ever known my name, except for the human who named me,” he mumbled in an undertone.
“Really? Now that’s pretty sad,” France commented. “Prussia and Spain know mine. We all told each other our names when the plague started to get bad.”
“You’re great at making me feel better, thanks,” England mumbled in reply, which Francis frowned at.
“You didn’t let me finish!” At that, England rolled his eyes but let him continue. “As I was saying, when you know someone else knows your name, it feels pretty good, like you’ve just told someone a secret that you’ve kept for ages.”
“Are you implying…?”
“That you tell me your name? No. But if you’re really that concerned about a name, then just tell someone you want to tell.”
"Mine’s Arthur, then.” England decided to say, which caught France a little off guard.
“I didn’t mean now!” He exclaimed.
“Well you did say to tell someone I wanted to tell and I didn’t know when else to tell you!” Arthur shot back, which made France shake his head in exasperation.
“You are unbelievable. It’s Francis, I suppose.” He said.
“What?”
“My name.”
“Oh.” The two sat in silence.
“Francis?” Arthur said, hesitantly.
“Hmm?”
“... Thanks.”
-
Francis put the journal down, grinning all the while at the memory. He closed the journal again, as to make sure Arthur wasn’t there. Coincidentally, he heard the door unlock as Arthur returned and he carefully put it back to its shelf. He looked for another book (he knew from experience that there was no point in manically rushing to a window when it came to escaping) and started to read it instead.
Minutes later, Arthur entered the room with a cup of tea to find Francis engrossed in one of his books. “Why do I keep finding you here?” He asked amusedly as Francis looked up from the book.
“No reason?” he replied in an innocent-sounding manner
“Right…” Arthur said. He would let it slide for now, but he was going to find out, somehow.