“You are a disgrace to our name. I made my peace with that dragon of yours, but this business with the chinese and that.. thing. This is shameful.”
Lord Allendale had not even turned to look them in the eyes, looking out the large windows onto the lawn, where Temeraire could be seen speaking with Laurence’ mother.
Laurence himself was rigid, still clutching that gorgeous china vase. The Admiralty had given them leave for the day, after they heard the first good news about the remedy. The captain said he wanted to offer the gift personnally.
Harry thought also that Laurence wasn’t going to take any risks with postal services, after having carried that godforsaken monstrosity through war, deserts and diseases.
“You have given me no choice. I thought our last conversation had made more of an impact and that you would know not to come back, but I shall have you formally dishenerited. God knows we are already the talk of the season.”
Silence, once again, fell between the two men, leaving Harry to fidget angrily. He’d understood that Laurence had a less than stellar familial situation - and could relate - but five years with the Chinese had soothed the abuse and replaced it with cold, acid anger. This was His captain that little lord was speaking to.
Stepping more fully into the room, Harry prowled to the desk as silently as his boots allowed and slammed both hands on its nice, lackered wood, leaving claw marks on the papers. Lord Allendale jumped and turned, mouth open in outrage and quite red already, turning even redder at the sight of Harry.
“Now you see here, boy -” he began, just as Laurence groaned in the background.
Wrong answer.
Harry smiled, shutting him up. “Call me boy again and your son will be the new Lord Allendale”, he said quietly.
“Harry, it is alright, I can handle this”, proposed Laurence, but he could hear the resignation in his voice. Good, a few months together had finally taught him when to pick his battles.
“You speak of disgrace and shame to your son - my Captain - but I only see one shameful thing in this room and it is you, Lord.” He was fed up with all those Lords who thought a birth rank meant anything. “Laurence is the adopted son of the Emperor of China and you will give him the respect he deserves, or I’ll burn your little home to the ground.”
“The respect !? To such an ungrategul child ! We are not in China, Mister Harry - ”
“It’s Lord Black to you, and I did not give you leave to call me by my given name.” Ew. Now he sounded like that Prejudice book Hermione had read in second year. “Your son has secured one of the most dangerous creatures of the world for England. He has stopped a war between us and bloody China. He’s a war hero and has done all this and more for England. You know what’s a disgrace ? That you don’t even acknowledge any of this.”
He slammed his hands yet again on the desk, leaning on it and not letting Laurence’s father recover.
“Your son is the reason you’re still speaking English instead of French right now. So you will show him respect.” He hissed, finishing just a few feet away from the terrified old man.
—-
“You were talking about Temeraire today ?”
“What? When?” Asked Harry distractedly, licking the syrup off his hands.
“When you spoke to my Fath- to Lord Allendale. About a dangerous creature”, explained Laurence, buttering yet another toast.
The hybrid frowned, stealing the toast right from his hand and crunching into it before he could protest. “You’re kidding, right ? Temeraire wouldn’t hurt a fly. No, of course…” he smiled again, fangs out in malice “… I was talking about me.”
“Does it hurt ?” asked Emily, helping Harry put on his new cravat.
“What, the tie ? No, it’s fine-”
“Not the cravat, you moron.” Out of all the modern words, why did she have to pick insults quicker. “The chains.”
She tugged on one, jutting just above his right collarbone, and he slapped her hand away, keeping his claws retracted.
“Careful. They don’t, usually. It’s only when I’m trying to change, or when someone touch them.” For good measure, he jiggled his arm, showing where the metal linked both wing and flesh. “I’ll be happy when they’re gone, though, I can’t dress properly like this.”
“You’ll never look proper anyway.” she retorted absently, looking him over. “You’re too...”
“Handsome ? Roguish ?” proposed Harry, smiling with both teeth and fangs.
“In your dreams, Potter. You’re too dark to pass as a noble, that’s all.”
“First of, that’s racist, okay. Also, I am a noble. My godfather’s a -”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s Lord Black, but he’s not a Nobleman, he’s a Pureblood. Powys’s not going to care about a wizard’ title.”
Harry shrugged, making her huff as his shirt ripped, casualty of his spikes.
“He’s going to care that wizards are trying to come here and that’s the only thing that matters to me.”
The men were silent, looking into the vapors coming out of the teapot as if they could soothe their hearts as well as the tea still infusing.
Laurence, face as dark as his crew had ever seen, spoke softly.
“Have you ever heard of a tournament where children fight dragons ?”
No one spoke, Harry’s casual explanation still fresh on their minds. Who could be cruel enough to send boys to their death like that ? For sport ?
“The lad’s not lying. When you look close enough, he’s covered in burns and claw marks. Old, too. Had to happen years ago.” Granby volunteered, shivering despite the heat.
"It can’t have been in England, sir. There’s almost no wild dragons left, and all the others are accounted for.” reasoned Willhoughby.
Laurence smiled, cold and contained, as the other part of Harry’s story suddenly made sense. “Not in this England, no.”
“You are a very peculiar dragon”, said Temeraire, lowering his head towards the ground, sniffing the air and recoiling a little. Something was wrong. “Why do you wear chains ? It smells like they are hurting you.”
The dragon chuckled, revealing glistening fangs, as it took a wobbly step forward, putting its hand out of the silken green cape that covered most of its body. The frail wrist was covered in blood red markings, and a hook went through the skin, linking it to rusted metal.
“This ? They are supposed to stop me from flying.”
Temeraire huffed, whiskers moving nervously. To stop a dragon from flying, what a strange and dangerous idea.
“Why would anyone want to stop you ? I suppose you are so small the wind could carry you away, but that does not seem enough of a reason to go to such ends.”
“They thought I would escape if I could fly.” The creature shrugged, making the cape slips a bit. “Too bad they forgot I could also fight on foot.”
“Escape ? Were you a prisoner ? But why did you keep the chains if you fought ? And who where they ?” The little dragon didn’t seem in imminent danger or asking for help, but it spoke of terrible things so casually that Temeraire did not know what to think.
“I suppose I was, yes. It seems I can’t fly with or without them, so Lien asked that I don’t try to break them off. They are all afraid that I would become even more monstrous that I am now.”
“You don’t seem very monstrous to me.”
“That is because you are a peculiar dragon too, then.”
“Well, if the other chinese dragons are giving you a hard time, I don’t think I’ll like them very much. I could ask my captain to take you with us back to England, where I’m sure they will think differently.”
The dragon laughed at that, launching its head back in a roar. The cape slid completely back, revealing a mane of dark hair and an human-shaped head, with slitted emeral eyes briming with laughter.
“Oh, I like you, Temeraire. I’d love to go to England but they’d kill me on the spot, or burn me on the stake, I suppose. You are very kind, but I’ll stay here.”
Temeraire stood still, head cocked to the side as he took his time looking at the dragon. It made no sense that it would possess a human face, but if you could forget about the draconic elements, it was definitively here. The hand, too, while clawed and scaly looking, ressembled Laurence’s.
This was a mystery, but it sparked no fear in his heart. Since they had begun their journey, they had discovered so many new people and species, this one was just... different.
Hearing Laurence cry his name, as the chinese boy slipped on the pond’s smooth stones, he made his decision and rose higher, putting his tail around so that it would encircle the dragon.
“They would have to go through me first. Come, I’ll introduce you to my captain. What’s your name ?”
So this is a Hetalia/Temeraire crossover, focused on America without any connection to the plot of the Temeraire series. I'm just disappointed it's taken me this long to type this up.
Maybe I'll do more with this someday. For now, this.
The Downed Dragon: Burial Mound of the Sky
It happened to every nation, every few hundred years or so, and it never got easier. Like a first love, though, the first dragon death was the hardest.
America was sitting on the roof of an abandoned barn, stroking the muscle of a heavyweight, as the Europeans said, sky blue dragon who had to crane his neck down to America’s side, even though he was sitting on the ground three stories below. His breath puffed in the late November air, coat close around him.
“They’re amazing, aren’t they?” the boy nation whispered in a leaf-soft tongue, leaning back precariously to stare up at the starred sky, like salt crusts and light sparkling over an ocean. The dragon kept him from falling automatically with a nudge, offering back support. The scales covering his snout were brittle and pale, but the gold eyes were still intelligent under a curving crown of horns.
“C’mon, take me to them, Hinto. You’re good at that.”
Hinto sighed and stepped away from the barn so he could unfurl his wings completely, war-torn and silver-tinged. He sprang into the air, and if it took more effort than it used to, he ignored it. After all, his captain was still a boy, even though he was older than the aging dragon. America whooped and cheered from his back as they climbed into the clear night sky, cold this far up and aching. Hinto’s bones ached, but America stroked his neck with all he was, and his heart ached more.
They had been together since his hatching, a special egg waiting a special rider. His origin tribe found him in the curious boy with sky eyes who never aged. He wandered without a name, and he wasn’t human.
He fed Hinto his first bite while he still had shell on his back, and named him Blue with all the simplicity of a child, but in a language a thousand miles away.
Hinto grew in leaps, spikes on his spine and a club of them at his tail, scales dusted with sunset, sunrise, and every color in between at first before settling on a bright, pale eggshell blue, blending perfectly into the brilliance of a midsummer’s day. Hinto’s names for his rider changed just as much before he was Amitola, the rainbow to his sky.
America was too small for him, but he thought bigger, adult and in charge. They accommodated.
When the first Europeans sailed onto their shores, they hid against the sky and watched.
There was little they could do to stop the invasion, so America walked among them, learning and growing and hair brightening. The natives they had grown with faded into the woods.
They met England first over the ocean, both of them curious about the men crawling over this new brown dragon’s body. America skittered up Hinto’s neck to stand on his nose as he stretched forward to investigate the odd arrangement.
The man sitting at the base of the foreign dragon’s neck yelled at him in a panic, and although his words were alien, the meaning was clear. America laughed.
“Hinto would never let that happen, Now go away and leave us alone!” But the foreigner was just as ignorant of his words, and wasn’t about to read his tone as well. The other people clambering around the dragon were staring at Hinto and America, who didn’t have his name yet, and Hinto bared his teeth at them.
They gestured their way to shore. America had seen foreigners from the ocean with their ships coming for a few years now, watching from above on clear days, but he and Hinto had avoided them, watching and waiting as they tore through his ground and muddied his water. But this was the first dragon they had seen, and when they landed on a large stretch of beach, America slid down and hid among Hinto’s tail spikes, each taller than him by a head or two, as the aliens leapt off the harnessed dragon, the first yelling man walking immediately towards him. Hinto pulled him in closer with his tail, and the yelling man stopped and said something in his other language. America shook his head, he didn’t know. Hinto bent down his head and growled in his face when he tried to get too close.
Instantly, the harnessed dragon leapt to his defense, snapping at Hinto’s nose. The yelling man shushed her, pet her muzzle, and she settled in a mirror defense of Hinto - captain first.
America and the yelling man looked at each other from behind their dragon’s limbs, and the boy started giggling. The yelling man’s mouth quirked up, and then they were both laughing, and America wove through Hinto’s deadly spikes with ease and approached him.
“Who are you?” The yelling man shrugged to the question, so America pointed at his dragon and said, “Hinto.” Then himself, “Me.” Then the yelling man, “You?”
Comprehension. He put his hand to his heart. “England.”
America smiled. “England! Welcome.” He waved in greeting, and the other men started creeping forward to say their name and marvel up at Hinto, who never let his golden eyes off his rider.
```````````
After that, America had many different names again, with different foreigners claiming and fighting over bits of him and beating his people back, away from the coast. America himself assimilated, taking to the languages of the European, as he learned to call them, like flying as his hair and eyes and skin grew fairer to match. Hinto barely tried the new languages, preferring the tree whispers of their native tongues, and America did little to force him to Westernize with him. He was still the biggest dragon they met, and more than once America heard the human flyers moan about the shame it was that Hinto was not in their fighting force, but instead captained by a boy who wasn’t even big enough to file his spikes down properly.
They gave Hinto a breed name, which he had never needed before. Sky Spiketail. America thought it was pretty, but Hinto could have cared less.
He held aloof from most of the foreign dragons, as more and more transported over, but the brown dragon they had met England with, Bess, was pushy and young, and kept him company, looked out for him, even though he was twice her size and her age. They were never as close as their captains became, but they had an understanding of each other and a fondness.
Through the century and a half, Hinto was there as America was colonized, civilized, a steady ear and a sky blue shoulder against religion, heartbreak, illness, always reminding him of his wild past and his rainbow days. Soon they even matched in looks, America’s eyes the color of his scales and hair his spikes, gold and light and copper.
But, unlike baby nations, dragons don’t live forever.
It was 1773 in the Europeans’ calendar, and Hinto took America for a star flight, even though his wings could barely keep his bulk aloft that long. Now America was a teenager by looks, big feet and hands and a charming smile. He stood at the back of Hinto’s neck, bareback but for the grooves of handholds kept cut into one of the biggest spikes. “The people are getting restless,” America yelled through the wind in a native tongue. “England’s still putting on his airs with the taxes. Something’s going to happen.”
Hinto looked back with the corner of a gold eye. “I should think so. You haven’t seen him in at least four years.”
“And eight months, three days.” America smiled sheepishly at Hinto’s snort.
“You can miss him if you want, you know.”
America shrugged. “I do, but he’s not you. He doesn’t sort through my head like you.” America rested his cheek on the spike he was clutching, the point just over his head, and closed his eyes with a sigh. “Boston is angry.”
“Boston is always angry.” America laughed, and Hinto’s eyes softened as they could. “Enjoy this night. The stars are beautiful.”
“Yeah.” America tilted his head back and watched the stars twirl above as Hinto flew aimlessly, the dual sets of constellations he knew overlapping, merging.
When Hinto landed in the large field behind their English-built home, America slithered down and hugged his muzzle. “Thank you, Hinto.”
“Of course, Amitola.” Before America could turn and let go, though, he reached around and captured him with his foreleg. “Stay the night. It would be a shame to put a ceiling over this sky.”
America smiled. “Of course. Hinto.” He curled up on Hinto’s leg, and the dragon curved his wings around, leaving a gap for a skylight, and they talked in low tones until the grey light took them to sleep.
When England shook America awake later that day, Hinto was dead, and his surprise visit became a week of consoling, crying, and yelling.
They buried him where he lay, dragon-carried dirt and a small service. America slept on the new hill for six nights, avoiding England and Bess. He couldn’t look at them without Hinto appearing.
England left without saying goodbye, angry at America’s all-encompassing grief. (It had been too long for him; he had forgotten the pain.)
Soon after, America painted up like a native with his new people and threw tea in the harbor.
