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New York Harbor, HMS Jersey, American Revolutionary War.
"I have a brother his age," Alfred said to one of the older prisoners as he closed the eyes of a just boy just dead. No one on this rotting hulk had been condemned to a clean death because the British weren't honest enough for that. Instead, the gavel falls on the benches of redcoat courts, and prisoners taken from the field rot in the hulk of a decaying prison ship. (1.) Where they will die. Slowly, agonizingly, unfairly.
Someone took the single candle and backed toward the ship wall more alive than not with mouldering green. It flickered and caught the glint eyes of the rest of the 12 men assigned to the six bunks and Alfred swallowed, wondering how he'd spoken the words aloud. They never spoke much of anything, much less human things like family, home, brothers, and life. The day he arrived the man in the bunk, a rotting shadow of old coat and rags had told him he could only endure if he forgot those things.
"They said you had no family," The older prisoner said again. "When they brought you in,"
"None that would pay a ransom," Alfred lied easily because it was true, in a way. Even if Arthur knew where he was, he'd let him rot to prove the point that Alfred was the cause of his own misery. He shrugged and tugged his coat tighter around him. "My Father's disowned me. I hoped Matthew— my brother that is— would have come to his senses by now but he's always been... soft,"
"Hard to imagine," The man said, nodding to Alfred's arms. Even under his clothes, you could tell Alfred didn't waste away like the others. He'd always been strong and now he was fed more on the patriotism than the porridge they got twice a day.
"He's always been like that..." Alfred trailed off and crossed his arms. Matthew hadn't always been soft. Once, he'd been as independent-minded as Alfred, never waiting on the permission or approval of Paris. But Paris had been exchanged for London and the process had killed his baby brother's spirit. (2.)
In the end, he didn't have to finish his sentence. A wave of the reeking water that leaked from the bilges sloshed passed over his feet and he shivered as he hefted the body up from the hold to the waiting arms of the soldiers on the open deck. The single breath of fresh, salty sea air he got between the dead boy's feet disappearing through the hatch and the redcoats sealing it shut again made him dizzy with joy.
He collapsed back onto his bunk and wished to god it was Matt he could curl up next too. Strong or not, he was always wet and cold now and he wished for Matt the way he longed to be dry and warm. Weak or not, Mattie's mind had been designed to survive the cold and the damp. He always had some odd little trick or another. Once, when the weather had snapped while they were hunting and the thermometer had broken, Matt had thrown a blanket over them and lit a candle and they'd stopped shivering in moments. (3.) His sweet baby brother always had a way to keep them warm or fed. In return, Alfred had always been able to extract a laugh from Matt the way Father and France did lumber or fur.
He doesn't think of Mattie for a long time after that. Boards snapped at the hull and bilge slime and foul seawater flooded the cramped hell hole they call home. The dark brackish sludge seeped over their legs in their sleep and whatever of the human sick and waste steamed up from it filled their lungs. Men died the first night, and more the next day. Before, when the boy Matt's physical age was dragged up, the corpse haul was only daily. Now the redcoats pull them out every hour. In another day or so, Alfred is one of them, heaved up on deck from the belly of the prow of the HMS Jersey and rowed to shore in a stack of others.
He's halfway back in his body again, stuck between two other deadmen in their shrouds, soul still in the painful process of coming tumbling back to him after soaring over the whole of what the map called America when he saw... something. A shadow appeared behind the sailor at the rudder. Not invisible exactly, but silent. He saw the flash of a knife, heard the sailor gurgle and another body joined the pile in his place as someone small struggled to haul him away. Rolled like burdensome cargo, he fell limply over the edge of the boat and still numb with death and cold, Alfred could only brace himself for the icy water of New York Harbor.
It never came. Instead, he fell hard onto what he hoped to god was another rowboat and knew no more.
He woke at night. Half-buried in blankets by a dying fire. If he'd had any sense, the smart thing to do would have been to start examining his surroundings the way Prussia had told him to. But instead, all he could do was marvel at the fact he was warm and clean and thank god, dry.
Something moved above him in the darkness. The shadow from before flickering around the very edge of the firelight. It was vaguely the shape of a person, but it held its head at the wrong angle like a curious bird of prey watching something tasty on the ground. Alfred's hand closed over a rock and held his breath. He was already shaking, and he'd barely moved but his heart rate was so fast he couldn't tell one beat from another. Muttering the shortest of prayers that it was something corporeal, he held his breath and waited.
"Oh thank god," His brother said. "You're awake,"
Alfred's bowels turned to water in relief. Weakness splashed across his body in the aftermath, sending him flat on his back once more, his hand leaving the rock where it had never moved. The shadow, otherwise known as the Province of Quebec, Mattie, his baby brother, moved into the firelight. (4.)
"Mattie?" Alfred asked.
"Who the fuck else?" Matt rasped and Alfred almost smiled. All the odd angles, threatening in darkness, were just Mattie's slender body holding two rabbits against his body with one arm and a rifled musket that was still far too big for him over the other shoulder. He was not clad in the red coat, but the browns and greys he preferred for hunting clothes.
Matt stepped around the fire, seemed indecisive. The rifle was loaded, ready to fire and more importantly ready to stab, bayonet fixed. The last they had seen each other there had been one of those pointed at him and Matt had been all winter steel, sharp and cold and full of reluctant wrath. (5.) They stared at each other for another long moment.
"Are you going to hurt me?" Matt asked at last, and his voice was so small and warbling and fucking sad Alfred thought he would have let Matt stab him.
"No," Alfred said, instantly. That choice had been made more than a century ago when geography had only given him Matthew to his North and Maria to his south. Swallowing, he hedged his bets and nodded to the weapon in his brother's hand. "Besides you're the one with the rifle and I don't think I can even stand,"
Matt nodded and kneeled on the other side of the fire, rolling a log from a pile Alfred hadn't even noticed as he rebuilt the fire. The tension fled from his body and he collapsed on whatever it was he'd been laying on. One of the rough sacks full of spruce needles Matt slept on in the woods propped up on Matt's pack.
"You've been ill," Matt said by way of explanation as he noticed Alfred looking around. While he'd been gawking his brother had produced onions, carrots, turnip, and heads of garlic from his pockets.
He'd gathered as much. The was a camp bowl full of water next to him, nestled on pine boughs to keep it out of the dirt and a tea towel draped over the edge. Vaguely, he thought he could remember Matt sponging him down but the last concrete thing he could remember before the boat full of dead was burning up half encased in sludge. Swallowing, he brought the blanket to his chest like that would make him any less vulnerable.
"Did you kill that sailor?" He blurted out.
Matt froze and looked away for a long moment but eventually lit a small naval lantern and ignored Alfred all together to dice vegetables and skin the rabbits. But the flickering firelight and with the lamplight now too, he thought Matt looked a little ashamed. Alfred watched, a little sick to his stomach as Matt easily gutted the two bunnies.
"You're nauseous because you haven't had anything in your stomach for ages," He said like he could read Alfred's mind. And maybe he could. Matt gestured with the knife to the jug Alfred's left, still refusing to look at him. Pale, he looked far older than the twelve, thirteen or fourteen he was supposed to be as he went back to his cooking. "There's spruce beer just there. You'll probably feel a bit better if you drink something,"
"Matt, look at me. Did you kill that sailor?"
A sharp jolt of what in anyone else would have been anger passed through Matt's body like a spasm. But Alfred knew it was self-loathing. Matt had always been good at killing but it was utterly at odds with everything else he was. His brother stood and pinned the knife in the board he'd been cutting on and unfolded an iron tripod and hung a pot from it, dumping everything in with water and setting it to simmer.
"Matt..." Alfred prompted.
"If you saw enough to ask the question, you saw enough I don't need to answer it," He snapped and shoved his hands in his pockets and still would not look at him.
"Mattie,"
"Yes," Matthew said and finally, finally fucking looked at him. His eyes, always too large for his face, were ringed in dark puffy half circles. Alfred felt bad. But just a little, because his heart was leaping out of the familiar sea of despair like a dolphin. "Yes, I killed that sailor,"
"Does that mean you're with me now?" He asked, unable to stop himself.
"No," Matthew said and Alfred's hope turned to lead and plunged back into his belly.
"Oh,"
"I just told you I killed someone and that's your first question?" Matt asked, pouring more water into the pot. He still hadn't ventured near Alfred, like he was still afraid of him. "You're as bad as Lord Kirkland already,"
"He's not even your father!" Alfred threw back and the stricken look on his baby brother's face should have made him be quiet, but it only fed the sick feeling in his stomach. Illness, dehydration, his own guts still swollen from the brief decomposition that occurred while their souls ventured back to their bodies. Jealousy, maybe. Loneliness, more likely. But he didn't know either of those words as they applied to him. All there was left in him at that moment was anger. "You had your own and he left you!" (6.)
"So did you!" Matt roared and a rush of wind filled the silence as if nature itself, winter itself, took Matthew's side and the fire flickered dangerously low. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Alfred was lightheaded again.
"I'm sorry," Matt said after a long moment. He looked sad and Alfred felt sick. "Don't look at me like that. Christ's sake. I'm not... against you, Alfred, Jesus," He threw himself back into the dirt and drew his knees to his chest. "I'm not your enemy and I'm not your ally. I'm only your fucking brother,"
"I don't understand you," Alfred said. "Why bother getting me out if you..."
"I just said you're my brother, did I?" Matt said, his fingers driving hard on his temples.
"I killed that sailor you saw," He said again, staring heavenwards like the stars would forgive him if he admitted it. Maybe he would. "That sailor and then another four soldiers who found us last week. Before that, I had to pull the planks and flood the fucking ship so that's at least ten more of yours you can add to my tally."
Horror crept across Alfred's mind with the slow ease of a serpent and he white-knuckled the blankets.
"Matt they weren't... they weren't armed or dangerous they were waiting to be ransomed or released,"
"I know," Matt said, resting his cheek against his knee and giving a sick little smile, blank and dead behind the eyes. "And I didn't care. Still don't."
"Why would you—"
"You're out aren't you?" Matt stared at him and smiled again as Alfred recoiled. The Canadiens had, before being taken by Britain for the last time, been very good at inciting terror. Killing and disappearing into the woods, shooting from trees, slitting men's throats from behind, burning farms. Alfred swallowed and wanted to hate him. (7.)
But he had done just as bad. The need to correct the odd way his brother's moral compass swung wildly from point to point like his heart was as changeable as the magnetic north pole almost swallowed him. Justice and morality had always meant less to him than survival or love. But Alfred stared up at the moon and breathed in the fresh air and buried himself down into the blankets. It was the first time he'd seen the night sky in six weeks.
Glancing across the fire to Matt still watching him, he swallowed again and laid back and looked up. The moon's face as much the familiar face of a mother as he'd ever had stared back down at him, bright and cool. He breathed in the forest. Alfred felt like a liar, having claimed no family to ransom him. Matt had paid his ransom in blood and now he was free. And that was all he'd ever wanted, wasn't it? And it's not like he hadn't killed either. Neither of them would have lived to adulthood if they hadn't and Matt hadn't even gotten there yet.
"I didn't want to do it,"
Alfred's head snapped up and Matt's face had utterly changed like someone had cracked the ice and let his humanity through again. He was violently knuckling his eyes, trying not to cry but tears were coming anyway. He was barely a teenager, still soft-faced and more of the wide-eyed baby he'd been than a man.
"I didn't want too but I couldn't tell Lord Kirkland and you're so fucking hard to kill," He said, voice muffled as he pressed his face into his knees and arms, curled up on himself. "You were in there for weeks and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it except check the death lists and pray I could find your body. Weeks, Alfred."
He closed his eyes. The last one to die before Matt had apparently pried the boards had been the same age as Matt. Young and just as sad. Father could burn for all Alfred cared, but Mattie... Alfred opened his eyes and the evening star showed in the black pines above them and beyond was the dipper pointing to the north star. The rejection of Matt throwing him from Quebec stung. (8.) But he was here and Alfred was free because of him.
"Would you do it again?" He asked at last.
"Yes," Matt said, too quickly and still full of shuddering self-loathing. "In a moment. I didn't want to but I would do it again. I don't care. I don't care at all. You're out. You're out of that place. And if you ever end up back in there I'll sink the thing, I swear to God I will burn it down if I have to,"
Alfred almost smiled. Well, that answered that. But he didn't have the information he needed. "I meant would you throw me out of Quebec again. Choose father again. If I asked you again right now,"
"That choice can't be unmade," Matthew said, voice low and wrecked. "I spent my entire life fighting the British Empire. I can't do it anymore. It'd kill me. You don't know how close it was, Alfred. I would have let you drag me to war again but we aren't just us. My people are tired, I'm tired. I wouldn't survive this fight and we both know it. You were just too lonely to admit it," (9.)
Alfred wanted nothing more in the world than to argue that, his pride rearing up, his dignity too. The natural rights of man were to be free, to live under not the yoke of an empire across the Atlantic but only to himself and his own morals and God. But he looked at his brother, curled up on himself as the few winter leaves clinging to the branches of birch trees. He was right, he wouldn't have survived another war. Alfred was barely surviving this one and he'd always been the far sturdier of the two. Even now, suspecting his fever had only broken that day, he would probably be able to snap Matt in half if he really wanted to. But he didn't. Not at all.
"All right," He said after a long, long moment. "All right. I didn't mean what I said, about you not being Papa's. You're my brother. No matter what we do, right? Can't change geography.
"I wouldn't want to even we could," Matt said, very softly. He tightened his arms around his legs and the words that passed next were shuddery and made him sound even younger than was. He babbled, voice rising on a sob. "I love you. You're my family. If Lord Kirkland— if our Lord Father doesn't want me and Papa already said for the whole world he doesn't. You're my only family, Alfred. I just don't want to die. And I hate you for leaving but I don't want you to die and why can't you just come back? Please just come back,"
His baby brother still hadn't moved from his position, rocking back forth, as gentle as a ship in the wake of another.
"I love you too, Matt. No matter what, all right? We can't change geography and you're my baby brother. Come here, Mattie, come on." Matt moved like the fire flickered, there sitting in one moment, in Alfred's arms the next, a little forest shadow disappearing as the moon shifted. But he was solid enough when Alfred turned and gathered him in. Matt wriggled close the way he had any cold night they'd been in the same house. He cradled his brother close and wished Matt wasn't so fucking small.
"I can't come back, Matt," He said, thinking of the boy's he'd handed above deck again and all the others dead, killed by shooting, sabres or sickness. (10.) "Too much has happened already. I can't turn back. And I'm going to win, Matt. I know that. I've known that since it started. I wasn't made to be ruled,"
He felt Matt nod and his arms circled Alfred's waist and squeezed with everything in him. Alfred buried his face in Matt's hair. A moment to feel the grief like this hadn't passed yet. Letting his mind rest and feel everything that had happened didn't occur. But he had, at least in one way, lost his family. Not forever, maybe, but it had been lost.
"I brought enough gold to buy you a horse if the weather holds," Matt said after a long moment. His mind always, always planned for the next separation, trying to make himself ready to bear the grief that was almost more than even Alfred with all his strength could hold. "We'll have to go our own ways,"
"I know," Alfred said.
"And then what?" Matt asked.
Alfred didn't know, not exactly. He knew Arthur wouldn't come around anytime soon. Britain had been scorned and Papa was better at nothing on earth than holding a grudge. But the stars burned over the little clearing, bright as the fire and he stared up. Castor and Pollux were visible in Gemini. When Castor had died, Pollux had missed him so much he divided his immortality up to save their lives and let them live on in the stars. He had too many plans to let either of them die.
"We stay alive," He said. "We help each other stay alive and then someday, we'll be all right."