Work Text:
June 1487
The day was beautiful and shining. Sunlight streamed down and cast its warming beams on the rolling green fields and vast forests that surrounded Sheen Palace. Nearby, the River Thames flowed swiftly down its banks, water glistening as it lapped at the rocky shores and filling the air with the calming sound of its rushing. The air itself was clear and fresh, brought by a soft breeze from the south.
It was a stark, welcome difference from the dark, suffocating rooms she’d been kept in. The air had been stale and unmoving and the light had been hidden behind thick curtains and stuffy drapes. In reality, England didn’t know how much time had passed since she’d been allowed outside. Since she had breathed fresh air and soaked in the sunlight and felt the long, uncut grass beneath her feet. Dissension and violence and division had corroded her mind and eaten away at her memory until she’d practically been driven mad. They’d tucked her away in Sheen Palace, just enough upriver to be ‘safe’ but just close enough to London to be useful. They never cared, not truly. England knew they were far more obsessed with the power their victory gave them rather than the lives that had been lost to claim it.
She despised them. All of them.
The Lancasters. The Yorks. The Tudors.
Not because they had survived but because of the corpses they had stepped over to get there. She’d felt it. Them. Every loss, every dying breath, every bloody scream and terrified plea and hushed prayer. It ran through her core and changed into...something else. England knew she wasn’t the same as she had been when it had all begun. The wars and battles had warped her, transformed her, into a completely different person and she felt like a stranger in her own skin. Like an imposter who had been transposed into a body that wasn’t theirs.
Thoughts that didn’t feel like hers swarmed around in her head and made nausea swim sickeningly in her stomach. Even the fresh air, as nice as it was, felt foreign and strange and she could only take short, shallow breaths to prevent the bile from rising in her throat.
It was too much. It was all far too much and she needed to escape. England needed to process and filter through everything that was happening. The death, the chaos, the violent change. She needed a way to clear her head and escape, just for a few moments. Years.
She walked without thinking, unable to concentrate on any single thought and simply allowing herself to be led. Until, eventually, she found herself surrounded by the towering forms of ships - rocking gently in their places at the docks as their rigging ropes and white sails floated about in wind.
England watched them as people milled about around her, on and off the ships, loading and unloading them to prepare them for their voyages out on the open ocean.
The ocean. Open and free and wild.
A small smile cracked on her face, the first in what felt like forever, and she made her way towards the docks.