[ID: A black and white digital sketch of a giant angel Gojo Satoru resting his head on the backs of his hands while smiling down at a person. His body is pure light and has wings with eyes on the edge. /End ID]
Tagged by my sis, @obstinaterixatrix It's not even yet written technically but I have it in my mind so that counts "Sanji clattered to the floor, and the fact that Zoro could use the word 'clattered' for the sound he made said way too many things, none of them good." Tagging continues to be something I disregard just do it if you want
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
"You pray for your queen, do you not?"
"Thrice daily." Your knees are well acquainted with Catherine's chapel floor, the plush pillow of her stool.
"I fear you may have to start praying for yourself," says Antonio.
in very tight deadline tradition here is my piece for the @aphabriefhistoryoftime project! i chose an aph england character study, i havent given this boy enough love. enjoy the vague symbolism and 16th century bitching, my dudes.
be sure to check out the blog for the rest of the works! thank you for letting me be part of this project!
Summer has Whitehall in a chokehold, swelling the winery rafters and coaxing portraits to weep their oil off the canvas. Chapel candles drip wax in scented puddles on the floor.
You, with an armful of centuries and a recent mainland triumph to your name, have a headache.
It has been coming on for a while, now, this unrest behind your eyes. You've seen it on the Continent—embers of heresy, creeping their way towards the Channel, waiting for an updraft to trap them in sailcloth and scatter them over your cliffs. Your kind burn their fingertips on the coals, adding to the myriad of scar tissue you collect, and existence goes on.
Religion. A real bitch on the system, that.
*
A Spanish delegation comes to court. Antonio's cheeks are warm when you kiss them, rosy; he smells like sea air.
It is, for reasons irritatingly unknown, a prick at your nerves, like the grating of a bow on unkept strings.
You climb to the roof the way you did four centuries ago, dodging loose stones and staring up at the sky and breathing deeply of English countryside, down to shirtsleeves.
"They say she can't conceive," says Antonio, always the first to speak.
"Who?" you ask, pretending you don't already know.
"Her Majesty." He rolls onto his side, pillowing his cheek on his hand. "They say the marriage is a sin of the flesh. Incest."
You already know that, too. "People talk. They never haven't."
Antonio's jaw works; you watch several shadows—blinks, really—of a past and future cross his face. "You pray for your queen, do you not?"
"Thrice daily." Your knees are well acquainted with Catherine's chapel floor, the plush pillow of her stool.
"I fear you may have to start praying for yourself," says Antonio.
A gust of wind, thick with unspent rain, steals away the threat.
You reply, "I'll start by praying for a drink."
*
The French invade under the guise of peace. Friendship. Marriage. You sit under a canopy, fingers wrapped around a goblet, and watch.
"Parties," you grumble into your drink.
"I hear they're meant to be enjoyed."
Francis is leaning on his chair, his hair curling forward from the bun pulled away from his face in the thick heat of Calais. Your own hair is getting long; you fiddle with it restlessly. "Tell me something, Frenchman, how long have you known these—enjoyments to last?"
The kings have opted for a wrestling match. Francis eyes you like stripping to trousers is the solution to all your nations' problems. "You ask so many questions, Arthur. Perhaps you should stay on the continent, see what those philosophical brutes are all questioning around here."
"I know well enough."
It had come for their friends, this poison of faith. It tore into the earth and bled kingdoms of their reason. You believe in God and the sea—better off unchanging, far as you're concerned.
Francis plucks the goblet from your fingers and takes a long drink. "Has the world always changed this fast?"
"Maybe we're just getting old." A twinge of wounded pride blinks past your consciousness: the French king has won. You take back the goblet, gesturing with it to a close-knit family watching the festivities. "Who are they?"
Francis peers over your shoulder. "Thomas Boleyn and his daughters."
"Not French?"
"Non, Arthur. Not French."
*
The family follows you back across the Channel, along with choppy waters that leave your mind and body in a state of disarray.
The king takes one of the sisters to bed one night; you lie awake, the sea in your lungs. Mistresses are a routine appearance at court, and have been since courts slowly crawled into existence.
So why does this feel so—so foreboding? Different? The jaws of a terrible end are closing around your throat while you're still struggling to put a name to it.
Antonio comes back. There is no delegation for him to hide in: you can make out the sun in his hair like a holy headpiece. The Spaniard may as well be emblazoned on Catherine's chapel wall.
When you kiss in Hampton Court's maze, tearing away from the royals that twist at your insides, branches of the hedges tangle in your clothes. You taste copper.
*
You do not remember when the king takes the other sister into his rooms. The queen's hand on her rosary is white-knuckled; Antonio's eyes are shards of ice, sea-green; you do not feel well at all.
*
"A divorce?"
The Italian emissaries are young in appearance, with the countenance of children who have seen far too much. They lounge in chaises longues with stares equal parts incredulous and...almost amused. It whittles away at your eroding patience. "I'm just telling you what I know," you reply, fiddling with an empty inkwell at the desk you're sitting at.
The elder one snorts. "The annulment won't pass." He's got a voice on the cusp of deepening. You remember how it was, to be so desperate to be taken seriously. You have not really changed. "Tell your ruler—"
"My ruler," you interrupt, your palm hitting the table hard enough to rattle your glasses, "only listens to the woman currently warming his bed. You think I'm enjoying this?"
Lovino has the good graces to shrink back. His brother speaks next. "It isn't about whether or not we enjoy it, Arthur."
The boyishness of his timbre almost makes the condescension bearable. But you have never been particularly adept at interpersonal rubbish, and you stand in a dismissal. "I'll be waiting on the missive from the Pope."
The Italians sweep out with little fanfare and even less noise. By the time all the strings are pulled and the annulment is granted, the strain at the back of your neck has kept you from sleeping for eight days.
*
The king's second wife is, for all you care, faceless, more a manifestation of poor fortune than a queen. You dream you swallow your Spanish wedding band, the handfasting ribbon shoved down your windpipe.
Excommunicato. You're abandoned by the church. The continent's eyes, you think, are on you—some hard, some almost sympathetic. Foolishly, you let yourself think it may pass, like a fever along your shoulders when sickness rolls into London like a thundercloud.
It is far from the first time that you haven't known what to do, and it won't be the last. It does not mean you dislike it any less.
*
So you drink. It's a vice, you're well aware—you spent the better part of an early century getting your knuckles rapped every time you reached for something stronger than watery ale—but this whole goddamn country is a vice.
Your king, proclaimed Defender of the Faith, writes decrees and death sentences for non-compliance: the scraping of his drying quill leaves you twitchy and seeking out the bottom of your drink.
It's your own personal sacrament.
One of your oldest drinking mates has his feet up on your table, eyeing the glass you've already filled twice for him suspiciously. "Have you got anything better than this piss?"
"If I did, do you think I'd be drinking this along with you?"
Gilbert's laugh is like sandpaper, but it's familiar enough: a long time ago, you spoke something more or less the same, crowing up at the sky like you were gods. Faith had then clamped down on you like chains and spun you on your arses. "No wonder you look so horrid, Kirkland. All this garbage will fuck up your spirits."
You blow hair out of your face and swirl the dredge in your glass. "How did you do it?"
"Do what?" Gilbert asks, like he doesn't already know.
"Do—this. This change."
This laugh is one you haven't heard before. It's sharp, honed along a whetstone. "That's the thing you're not getting yet, brother. I didn't do shit."
You don't get it, no. It must be written all over the shadows in your face, because he leans forward. Not for the first time, his eyes bleed you dry. You need a third drink. (Or is it a fourth?) "Don't bullshit me, German. You follow heretic doctrine with more energy than a cannonball."
"So what, you want all my trade secrets now? I ought to charge you." Gilbert holds out his glass, and you fill it obligingly. "You've changed before. It may be time for everyone else to get with you, this time."
It's too cryptic for your inebriated mind to pick apart. Maybe he thinks so, too, because he knocks back half the drink and toasts your ceiling. "Neither of us are going to heaven, Arthur. Stop looking for penance where you don't have any due."
You dream of his eyes.
*
"You can't do this."
Antonio does not have a voice meant for anger. This had been your judgement until now: your disagreements ran like rapids, when you were younger, with his tongue tripping over your mess of a language. On visits inland, you eavesdropped on Habsburg court proceedings--Roderich a heavy-lidded, impassive statue, staring ahead while Antonio murmured something in his ear, their hands on a little blond boy's shoulders.
Now, the pressure at your neck has returned as the pair of you stand in the Tower's shade. It straightens out your spine, the pain does, and reminds you of your heartbeat. There is blood on your stockings.
"—lives up in smoke for some new holy war? I thought we were past these foolish things, Arthur, and now you've--"
"I've what?" It's tiring to stand; kneeling is so beneath you. "What have I done differently this time that's become so irredeemable? This is my job."
Antonio stares at you like you're a stranger. The Tower's ravens screech overhead. "Your job? On whose authority is this bloodshed?"
"The authority of the Church of England."
And it feels...good, to say it under open sky, like the clouds and brickwork have been waiting for you to say it.
*
It's dizzying, this change. It reminds you, almost, of relearning your own language, when you were a barefooted child and Francis breathed nonsense vowels against your cheeks until you babbled nonsense in return. Equally dizzying is the thought that if he were here, Francis may not recognize you either.
You catch your reflection in the beaten brass of a tea service: you are all edges, cut of a cloth that you were not baptized in. All of you change; ashes to ashes of a different name. Why should they expect any different of you? Isn't this what the Continent was on about?
You've done your crusades. Your holy wars, like Antonio prattled on about before you dismissed him with axe blows in the echoes of your footsteps. Maybe you're naive to have thought yourself above such trifles, but you're drunk on the newness of it all. Whatever sludge you'd kept pouring into you and Beilschmidt's glasses could never compare to this. No kings, no dead lines and crowns picked up from the dirt—this is the heavens realigning to you.
Somewhere, you think you can hear your companions on the Continent laugh. You can feel their eyes, anyhow. The whole world's eyes, watching you caught in the fever of your own people.
*
And that's what it is, for longer than you had believed possible. You watch the faceless queen lose her face entirely. You watch the king try again. And again.
(And again and again.)
More Germans show up at your door, stone-faced with their eyes like cracking jewels. Antonio shows up less and less, but never entirely goes away. The smell of the sea hangs stiffly in the air: you want so badly to burn something to set it away.
Yourself, maybe.
When the time comes for your leader to die, you aren't sure what you expect. This fever that's settled over you like melted silk, it's yet to break, and even after the abbey is cleared (English service, English bishop, English and English and English) you're left in the front pew, staring at the stones and at your dead kings, burning.
There are three royal children, baptized at your extremes. You dream of the daughters: they pull on your arms until you scream at them to stop, that they'll tear you asunder.
The war is on the English soil that you scrub from under your fingernails. There will be enough to bury you in it, someday, in the halls of the abbey with your heretic masses.
Maybe you'll be happy to oblige, then. You're not going to heaven anyway—you're not going anywhere. You and God and the sea, you'll all stay on this rock until it's swallowed whole by the heat in your bones, no faith left to defend.
You go to your rooms and dig out an exiled queen's old prayer bench, and reacquaint your knees with the cushion, and say nothing.
