WIP
a scene from a fic i’m currently working on set in may 1861, exploring british-american relations during the american civil war. cw for injury mention and real-life historical events. “maría” is mexico.
“Still a lying old bastard through and through, aren’t you?” Alfred hisses. “What comes next? Recognition of statehood, of course. Don’t think I’m oblivious to how some of your people are absolutely giddy at the thought of my undoing. Good riddance to the vulgar mob rule that goes by the name of American democracy, etcetera etcetera.”
“Unhand me at once,” Arthur hisses. “Conduct yourself with some of the dignity I raised you to have, will you?”
“Glad to know you haven’t changed one bit, Lord Father. Good manners rank above morals, honour and any sense of integrity, as always, with you,” Alfred’s smile is dark and bitter, but he releases his grip, flings Arthur’s wrist aside. There’s something like sheer hatred now, in his face, but his voice is low, almost quiet. “And don’t talk about dignity, when you made me this way; you, and all your people’s bullshit. I didn’t have a choice when you claimed me at Jamestown—”
“I made you this way? It’s been almost a hundred years since you’ve thrown away my name, in case you’ve forgotten,” Arthur cuts in. There’s something simmering and furious boiling up—that Alfred always so easily drew out of him. Yorktown. A shot to the jaw, dead-on. He’d coughed out blood and teeth and bone in front of his men. “Do I make you do anything anymore? Did you not loudly and proudly announce yourself as a naval power? That huge uproar you created in the Far East? Bragging to me how you’d finally matched my feats, dragging another Old World nation out of isolation to rejoin the international community on the threat of war and glories of foreign commerce?”
The fingers of Arthur’s left hand curl inadvertently around his teacup. It’s burning hot. He continues. “And at Jamestown, I saved you. Gave you my name and my protection! When they would have cast you out! Left you to die—”
“Saved? I was a prize! For your ambition!” This now, from Alfred, is a shout, thunderous and furious. “Antonio had María, and you wanted to match that! Because being an insignificant, fuckin’ shitheap island with nothing else to your glorified name was too much for your overblown ego. It never is for you diseased, miserable Old World bastards. And I disappointed you at first, didn’t I? No gold, no riches, just famine and—”
“Ambition? Overblown ego? You certainly aren’t short of it yourself, Alfred,” Arthur sneers. His heart thunders in his breast, and he feels at once hot and icy cold. Oh, he’s just like me. Not at all in appearance—but in the soul. So much like me. All that hungry ambition, and always compulsively cruel in our vulnerability. He levels Alfred with a cool stare. “And speaking of María—” He doesn’t miss the way his eldest son flinches, that exact same way he did as a boy—“you chose to go to war with her, you alone—and now the land you seized from her in your victory has torn you asunder, isn’t that right?”
