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War is… a terrible thing.
France felt it in the way his fingers trembled around the rifle in his hands—barely perceptible, but constant. He didn’t try to stop it. There was no point anymore. His arms felt like lead, his shoulders like they belonged to someone else. Slowly, deliberately, he loosened his grip.
The rifle slipped from his hands and sank into the mud with a wet splurch, swallowed almost immediately. The sound was laughably small beneath the thunder of artillery, the crack of gunfire, the screaming—always the screaming, rising and falling with the artillery like the land itself was learning how to panic.
It wasn’t just noise.
It itched under his skin, deep and persistent, like something trying to claw its way out. Every shell that struck the ground landed inside him too, reverberating through bone and nerve alike. Fear bled through the land—sharp, sour, metallic—layered with anger and grief until it blurred into something indivisible.
France swallowed hard, breath stuttering.
“Francis!”
The shout cut through the noise anyway.
France turned his head. Beside him, a French soldier stared back with wide, frantic eyes, face smeared with dirt and blood that might not have been his. Jean, France thought distantly, as if the name had to travel a long way to reach him. Yes. Jean.
So young. Barely trained enough for this kind of retreat.
France wondered—vaguely, irrelevantly—if he reached far enough, deep enough, he could find this fear among the others. Jean’s fear. If it would taste different from the rest. If he could trace it through the ground beneath their feet, isolate it from the terror soaking into the soil.
He didn’t want it there.
Didn’t want this boy’s fear folded into him, pressed under his skin alongside all the others.
“What are you doing?” Jean shouted, voice breaking. “You can’t just—!”
France looked at him for a moment too long. Took in the fear, the youth, the way his hands were clenched so tightly around his own rifle that his knuckles had gone white.
France managed a thin smile.
“Doucement,” he murmured, the word automatic, worn smooth with use. He leaned closer so Jean could hear him. "Breathe for me, hm? Like that. You’re still here.”
Jean swallowed hard. “You— you dropped your gun.”
“I know,” France said softly. “It’s alright, mon garçon. Look at me. Stay here.”
Jean swallowed, eyes darting, but he nodded—once, sharp and desperate.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to stall. The smoke thinned just enough for the light to hit wrong, the air ringing like a held breath. France bent down, fingers brushing the slick metal half-buried in the mud.
He thought—briefly, stupidly—that if he could just get back up, if he could just keep Jean here, maybe—
He never finished straightening up.
The explosion tore the ground open.
Sound vanished first—ripped away so violently it felt physical. Heat followed, a wall of it, white and consuming. France felt himself thrown, felt his body hit the ground with bone-jarring force. Something struck his side. Something else struck his head.
For one distant, disconnected instant, he thought, Jean—
Then there was nothing.
No pain. No sound. No thought.
France woke to motion.
At first, he thought he was still dying—caught in the loop again, the endless echo of war and fire. His body felt wrong—too light in places, impossibly heavy in others, sensation lagging behind thought as if parts of him were still catching up. His vision swam, the world reduced to smoke-blurred shapes and flashes of gray sky.
He realized he was being dragged.
For a moment, disoriented, he thought of Jean—then couldn’t remember if the boy had been behind him, or beside him, or already gone.
Sensation registered slowly: rough hands gripping his coat, the jolt of his body over uneven ground, the scrape of rubble beneath what should have been his boots. His uniform dragged at him, sodden wool pulling him back toward the ground, heavy with mud and blood and rain it had never been meant to carry.
“Bloody hell—why are you so blasted heavy—what do you lot make these coats out of, lead?”
The voice cut through the haze.
France swallowed. His throat burned; his lungs felt full of ash, but this time—this time—sound scraped its way out.
“Attends—” he tried, the word slurring on his tongue.
Then he registered the voice. The grip.
England.
“Charming,” France croaked instead. “You always say such lovely things when you find me half-dead.”
England startled so hard he nearly dropped him.
“—France?” He looked down sharply, disbelief flashing across his face before it hardened into anger. His eyes were sharp—too sharp—but something about them looked wrong, as if the light in them had been rubbed thin by days without rest. “You absolute bastard. You pick now to wake up?”
France squinted up at him, vision swimming. “Was there… a better time you’d prefer?” he rasped. “I can try again.”
“Don’t be stupid,” England snapped, hauling him closer as another explosion rattled the ground. His grip bit hard into France’s coat. France could feel the tremor in it, faint but persistent, through the fabric. “As if I’d let you die out here like a bloody amateur.”
France huffed a weak laugh that turned into a cough. “You’re carrying me an awful long way for someone who insists he doesn't care.”
England shot him a glare. It still cut, but it arrived slower than France remembered. “You can tease me when you’re in one piece.”
They staggered a few more steps. France’s awareness came in pieces—ground, sky, England’s grip, the heat crawling across skin that didn’t quite feel like his. Something whistled overhead, sharp and descending, and England swore under his breath. The wall ahead of them shuddered as debris rained down.
England dragged him behind what little shelter there was and finally let him slump against the stone. He stayed standing, back to the wall, arms tight around his rifle. His hair was stiff with something dark—mud, maybe ash. Blood streaked his coat in places France couldn’t bring himself to look at for long.
“Still with me?” England asked, his voice sharper than the words called for.
France took a breath. It caught halfway in. He tried again. “Unfortunately.”
England snorted. “Figures."
Another blast. Closer this time. The wall trembled; dust fell into France’s hair and eyes. His body jerked at the impact, sensation lagging, catching up too late.
“Careful,” France murmured. “You’ll ruin what’s left of my good looks.”
England shot him a look. “You don’t have good looks right now.”
France smiled anyway. It felt thin. Faded too quickly.
The noise didn’t stop.
It crawled under his skin, relentless. Not just the sound of shells and gunfire aboveground, but something deeper—pressure without relief. Every impact echoed inside him, too close, too intimate, until there was no space left to brace against it.
France gasped softly, fingers curling against the stone.
He could feel it.
The bombs tearing into the earth. The fear of people huddled in cellars and ditches, clutching what they’d managed to carry, sharp and coppery on his tongue. Anger—hot, defiant, desperate—mixing with grief until it turned sour. Too many emotions, none of them his, all of them lodged beneath his skin in a writhing, ugly mass.
France squeezed his eyes shut.
He’d held worse. He had. Revolutions. Occupations. Centuries of blood and fire.
But this—this was happening too fast. All at once. And he was already coming apart.
“England,” he said, intending another quip.
The word came out softer than he meant.
England glanced down at him, frown deepening. “What.”
France swallowed. The ground tilted. His hands felt far away, like they belonged to someone else. The world was starting to dim around the edges, the sound stretching, distorting.
Another impact rippled through him. France’s breath stuttered. For a second, he couldn’t tell where his body ended and the country began.
He breathed in.
And as he breathed out, the name slipped free—unplanned, unguarded.
“Arthur,” Francis whispered.
England stopped.
Not just stilled—stopped, like someone had reached in and pulled a switch. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there, staring down at Francis with an expression Francis had almost forgotten existed.
Huh, Francis thought vaguely. You don’t see that every day.
Even through the haze, it struck him as faintly absurd—England, caught so completely off guard he’d forgotten how to snarl. There was mud streaked through his hair, dust clinging to his lashes. For once, he looked exactly as shaken as the rest of the world.
The next explosion boomed somewhere too close, the shockwave rattling through the wall, through Francis’s bones. His eyes fluttered. The moment stretched, thin and fragile.
“I’m scared."
The words barely made it past his lips.
England still hadn’t moved.
Francis’s vision finally gave in, darkness spilling in from the edges. Just before it swallowed him whole, something shifted—boots scraping, breath hitching—
England dropped down beside him, too fast, knees hitting the mud with a dull thud. “Francis—”
But Francis was already gone, the last thing he felt the sudden pressure of England’s hand at his shoulder as the world slipped quietly away.