Fandom: Hetalia
Prompt: Kidnapped
Rating: G
Word Count: 2532
Decided to make a thing that could fit into When Men Weren't Present between chapters 1 & 2 but isn't plot important. I tried to make this fic complimentary to On Pol and the Eng also just for fun.
England gets mixed up in Fae shenanigans.
@badthingshappenbingo
In a turn of events England should've seen, England got picked up from the earth in the arms of his brother in the aftermath of their first victory against the Norman foes.
Alba had yanked him up from the earth and immediately went to work dropping his fresh-won ego into the dirt. England kicked and squirmed until letting loose, giving up. The hug forced on him was inescapable.
The words, though, he was determined to offset. Alba accused him of the most offensive shortcomings with his smile and stupid tease.
"Wha- no!" England said, offended, "I can use magic just fine!"
"Kinye?" Alba challenged him. "I don't think you ken a simple pixie summoning spell since thu a' gabhail Éire's fancy new religion."
"Yes I do! I can prove it! I could do one here and now!"
Alba tilted his head in mock thought, pretending to think hard about his claim. England impatiently wriggled. He knew his brother would let up and make him try for his own entertainment--and England would show him wrong!
"Ye'll try?" Alba finally said.
"I will!"
Alba let him drop back to his feet and England popped back up like a daisy.
"Here, Cymru, our wee brother's gaun to put on a show for us!" He shouted and waved over another pair of eyes to add to England's pressure. Several humans looked up from their business looting fallen men, but dropped their interest once they realised it concerned the oddest of them.
His other sibling came wandering, and he came wandering while still wearing the blood of their enemies on his clothes. England wrinkled his nose with distaste. Cymru was still Druid... fully, as the past had decreed it. No other brother prayed to the earth anymore as Éire had brought a new faith to their land, and as eldest, led them alongside him. Cymru held out. Alba skirt the edges. It showed how Cymru refused to scrub his clothes, and blood was sacred, life, it was to be respected. A black, dried smear of gore was left stained on his brother's sleeves even though the rest of his armor and cloths and all his fellows had scrubbed themselves clean. 'The battle isn't over, William is on his way,' Cymru had said right after they won. It was a 'trophy and a promise for the next batch.' Alba conceded that it was profane. England agreed, because England wanted to bask in the feeling of having won without thinking about the next battle.
"A show? What's he going to do in his show?" Cymru immediately picked up on Alba's game, albeit with a lighter laugh and encouraging tone.
It almost annoyed him, but he knew he'd prove to them how well-practiced he'd became. He'd lived alone for a while after the Romans and Danes, he'd had much time to sharpen his magic on his own.
"He's gaun to summon some fairy."
"I hope he remembers what they look like? He never goes with me to Calan Mai celebrations anymore," Cymru said.
"Of course I recall them!" England had seen many and they knew it!
"Aye but you've never been to the Otherworld."
His brothers grinned. England stiffened.
Deus vous guarde. Fireplaces that hissed and sparked like fireflies, red pelted fangs with glittering stag-eyes, deep, cold, wormed earth.
Some intuition stopped him from claiming his adventures had, indeed, brought him to the Otherworld.
Fireglow, damp soil and the grin of fangs, deep Otherworld, stumbling through a mushroom ring further than he had ever intended. The mist gates he had missed... England hadn't entered the way he ought to have entered. Snared in Fae traps.
Memory of that fae lord came sneaking back into his mind.
That Fox... England had his weaved gift safely looped onto a thick cord of a necklace.
He'd nearly forgotten.
His fingers subconsciously reached to his waist-pouch where he believed he'd put the coarse cord...
"Sasann?"
His reverie broke.
"It's England," he complained. He'd worked hard for the name, his brothers still refused it.
"Oh? And you haven't any second thoughts about showing us how rusty your magic's gotten?" Came the immediate tease.
"No! I was just thinking to myself!"
England took his stick of a wand from his cloak. No brother ever went anywhere without mum's last gift, a piece of her fading magic which had rested in her people's sacred yew tree, cut neatly into a concise point. Never a mother ever died who had a family.
Bracing himself, he angled his foot forward, raised his wand-hand back, and pulled his own magic to curl warmly along the wand.
A pixie summoning spell took barely any focus at all.
He almost paid too little attention-- it flicked with a whizz-zip and a little dust-like gold-snow shooting from the star of the end.
It hit the dirt in a snuffed plume of smoke.
Visually, the display hadn't been pretty or controlled by any means, but luckily that didn't negate the workings of magic. England felt something had changed. There was a heavier static in the air.
"Hahah! Ah, that daedna go a snip!" Scotland bellowed. Cymru merely shook his head with a small smile.
His brows furrowed.
Laughter?
But... the air--he felt it, it was magic full, he'd summoned something? Surely? A fae--a brownie or a pixie--he knew he'd done something!
His brothers didn't seem to feel it. England frantically turned a circle to look for what he'd summoned. His brothers renewed their laughter.
"I swear I summoned something I..."
His sight met a glittering dark gaze.
England's breath caught.
A paw-digit, slowly, lifted to its lips to shush him. Its eyes were granite, its head tilt uneven, its smile balanced on the verge of fangs.
Behind his brothers.
"Salute," it said low and delighted, "I see you've painted yourself in blood. Red suits you well." He spoke lowly.
England had scrubbed himself of battle. There was no blood, he didn't know what the fae was talking about. He started to speak to correct the Fox, but he never made a sound. The fox hushed him again.
"This is between us, us good friends. Did you forget your brothers are here to hear you? They do not have the sight for me. They wouldn't understand, no, no if you give your friend up you might have to explain your stumble in the woods. How embarrassing to fall into a mushroom ring."
England shut up.
His brothers had quieted as well.
"It's okay, we'll practice your magic and you'll get better again." Cymru mistook his paleness for humiliation.
No, no, that wasn't true--
"Let them believe what they will." Reynard circled around his brothers, coming closer before turning off to walk to the woods. "Follow. You should run, make it fast. Then we will talk, for I know enemies well. When you leave your brothers, they will think your flight their own fault. They might even shower you with their attentions and apologies later... wouldn't you like that?"
His tail circled a beckoning.
England wrung his hands around his wand. Dare he trust a fox of a Fae... the even if the Fae hadn't harmed him before, the Fae wasn't in obligation to leave him untouched again. But the Fae had favoured him, some Fae gave men secrets and tips, Reynard seemed to sympathise with his struggle against the Normans?
Yet Reynard was a Fae, something mysterious and twisting. Something powerful.
How well did this Fae know his enemies?
"Your choice. Run."
England let his conflict continue to war even as he began to move. He didn't think about running. His foot rolled to his toes, he leaned, falling quick into a dash that he barely registered.
A string tugged him gently as he moved to run, but, Reynard, strolling ahead, remained always ahead.
Then, in a blink, England was under the thick forest shade.
He couldn't hear his brothers anymore. The forest arms wrapped silent around him, all else stagnated. Not a bird, not a fly. Reynard was the only movement he saw out of the corner of his eye--for even the sky had taken a break for Reynard.
Not a single gust of wind.
"Good choice," the fox praised with dark eyes, "I understood you to be fox-clever, which you have not failed."
"When will I go back to my brothers?" He asked to cut the fox from speaking further. Praise was warm, it was a fluffing of his feathers he liked, especially so soon after his accompanying victory, but he wanted praise most from another set of mouths. The words of a Fae were less than the words of a brother.
"Soon, do not fret." Its body stood stretched on twos, pulling itself into his own child-sized hight range. Its feet enjoyed a stage of a log which put it higher than him. The stage seemed to make Reynard particularly imposing with straight held shoulders and narrow nose. "I came to offer my fair hand to council, for I'd hate for such a clever kit to fall dead before his worth is known."
Its paw held out as a human hand, a royal hand to be kissed.
"Why? What importance am I to you? Why did you of all fae answer me?"
"I offered a valuable possession unto you, my name, one I lent for wise use. Do not mock my gift! Did you not expect loyalty? And here you aimlessly beckoned, je écoutait. To gift words is my only desire... for one like you so..." it rolled its paw, flexing each toe before settling.
"Close," Reynard said wistfully.
His tone became fond once more. England shifted where he stood.
"Close...?"
"Indeed. Return your mind, let us learn of the legion which tramples English way."
Legion reminded him of Rome. Rome who had given him much--roads and architecture and words and walls--but the rebellions buried in his earth had been savage and the years degrading. His land had always been barren of rare resources, the Romans had concluded that humans were the only resource worth exploiting.
He'd lost much in exchange for his gains.
Normans could be less than Romans, Rome had been the greatest to ever live. And England had driven out the greatest, he could drive out the Normans.
"I don't need your help, my brothers standing with me are enough."
The fox hummed a tone of soft demean.
"I see," the Fae sighed. "I see. Yes." He shook his head and his ears folded backwards. "Waste, I will let you discover this yourself. Little will to realign or alter your allies and foes." The fox paw raised and tapped two thorn-claws together.
It took England a moment to notice that the forest had suddenly resumed moving. It took him moments longer to see it was moving wrong, not how forests aught to move.
The leaves began to crawl, faster, colours taking on the texture of wax, a grim, melting forest of greens and browns and blacks. The smudging fire orange of Reynard's visage dripped, dripped, dripped dizzy into the muddy mix till all merged into muddy black.
The forest died as a candle did, drooping, dripping, melting.
England lost control of his arms and legs. To his silent horror, his hands began to drip, too. He couldn't move, his heart pounded a heavy thump of fear as he was swallowed into nothing.
And for a moment everything washed away...
England half-woke to soft, gentle, swaying trees.
He groggily wondered if he still dreamt.
Where...?
Had he woken?
England drifted on the edge of his dreams. The trees were navy in the night, visible as he swam between sleep and awareness. Imagining his body crawling off for the tree-line fooled his head, but never moving, he remained.
Between sleep he fell as his mind grew tired.
England woke.
He was warm.
Lulls of heat were in the air.... England found his body mobile and curled into soft pelts and blankets. Crackling pops of wood drying in a fire bloomed near, washing shadows and a glow on the unrealised shapes around him. The forest was gone, the sky was still dark. He shifted, rolling to reorient his confusion.
"Sasann?"
Home. Where was mother?
A hand came to his shoulder. England let himself be guided to lift from his nest. He clutched the blankets close to keep their warmth.
Stars glittered navy overhead.
Seeing the open stars... there, no shelter overhead. No roof. There was no mother to wonder about. No... she was a memory.
England pulled the blankets closer.
Alba... his brother was next to him, carefully and silently checking him.
His brothers were camped in a cove of rocks, he saw. Éire was missing, Cymru and Alba were the only ones left by his side.
England barely remembered his dream... fae-like. It should've been real. It had been midday when he'd... left, right? Or after? Had he gone at all? The fae might've warped time, slowing their meeting had lasted longer than it had seemed. The memory of it was slipping unnaturally... replacing the memory was a cotton-stuffed spiderweb that reeked of fairy magic.
That made him frightened.
"What happened?" England leaned against Alba. Scotland's face was shrouded by the glow of the fire.
"... Ah dinnae ken. You ran aa we dinnae find you 'til late... you were sleeping ablow a Hawthorn."
England took a deep breath.
Hawthorn, the wood home of fae. Those who slept below would rarely wake again.
"What were you doin' ablo a Hawthorn?" His brother spoke in such a resigned, pained voice.
"I don't know I... I-I didn't go to the Otherworld."
The fox had taken him into the forest, the place that had melted. But? Had he? Had the forest been made of otherworld tree?
England wrung his hands.
It had been odd tree-kind, mute and dead. No bug, no bird, no living he had heard. The forest had been wrong... warped as otherword things were. It could have been fae forest, for even the sky had been unmoving. Only the Fox had been alive as living things should be.
But how could Reynard have taken him to the Otherworld without permission?
England got colder than he was already cold as he realised.
He had inadvertently agreed to go with a fae. To go anywhere. The fae had offered to take him somewhere away from his brothers, it had asked him to follow, England had taken the offer. He had given himself up fully to the fae's will and Otherworld realm.
"I made a mistake," England whispered.
"Tell me you hivna' made a promise..." His brother's brows drew together. "Tell me it wisna' longer than a day?"
"I don't think... I think-I think I turned something down. I can't remember.... I know it was short, so short, I was just... I was just with you and...then..." England couldn't say anything else.
"That's good," Scotland said. He embraced England in a tight hug, one hand carding into his tangled hair guiding his head to rest on his shoulder. "I think you'd've remembered it if you'd've made a promise."
"M' sorry..."
"No apologies, you're nae gone."
England realised his wand was no longer with him.
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