waking up at the start of the end of the world;

[wingborne]

He sits there, cigarette lighted, and the world burns around him. But he doesn’t give a fuck. Tells himself that, tells it to himself enough then maybe it’d be true. It’s the end of the world, and he’s faced enough end of the worlds that he’s sick and tired of them. London Bridge is falling down, the Eye’s gone up in flames, and Manchester United won’t be playing this Saturday. There isn’t anymore Saturdays.

His roads have been torn up, his shops closed down, his people screaming. There are robberies for flat screen tellies for shows that don’t matter. He sits in the middle of the street as the smog rolls around his feat, pea green soup. Scotland’s gone, and that’s fine. America, France, Japan, they’ve all gone. It’s just him, and he’s alone and forgotten by the very earth that raised him. His eyes are turned to the sky, but it’s gray from the heavy smoke billowing from his ruins. He used to see stars, navigate through rocky oceans to leave his blood-stained mark on the earth. That’s all gone now.

Somewhere, he hears a child scream. He allows the cigarette to drop into his lap, to roll off next to the chunk of broken road. His ribs have caved in, and his hands are bloody pulps of flesh, barely held together with thin stretches of flesh. He can hardly see through the blood matting his hair, but he stands on his broken ankle and limps to the sound. If it’s a cave-in, he’ll dig them up with his lost hands, scraping the rock with his bones. If it’s a robbery, then he’ll fight them to the death with his broken teeth and swollen tongue.

But it’s a child who’s lying on the side of the road, near the sharp jutting of a road. His stomach is bloodied, and the small hands try desperately to grasp at the secrets of his body. England releases his numb grasp of the knife, and stumbles towards him, dragging his ankle. He kneels down, gently pushing back the child’s hair. A dusky blond, and the boy has the deepest blue eyes. He breathes through his teeth, rustling through his pockets for any scrap that could help. He knows it’s too late for the boy. The child’s practically gone, whimpering and twisting in pain, and any help would be too late.

Still. But still, he tears the remains of his jacket off his scarred back, and wraps the boy within it. The world burns around him, but he tightly grasps the child’s small hand.

“It’ll be all right,” he lies with hoarse breath, and the child’s whimpering seems to quiet. The boy painfully searches his face, and England thinks he makes a gruesome sight, blood and raw bone jutting from his face. But he clutches his hand, tightly, and makes his false promises.

“Stay here. I’ll get help.” There’s no help, not anymore, but he’ll find it. Struggling, he tries to stand, and finds his ankle collapsing underneath him. He sprawls into the dirt, and his choked breath strangles his thin throat.

“Don’t go,” the boy whispers. His face is grimy, and England wonders if he’s ten, or nine, or even less. He shouldn’t be dying in the middle of the road that would soon turn to tar. He should be learning his letters, and annoying his parents, and running around the parks, making that very racket that the neighbors complain about. But he’s not, because he’s dying, hand small and limpid.

“It’s all right. I won’t be long.” England half-crawls to the boy again, hand still loosely grasping his. Gently, he brushes back the boy’s hair, and tries to shut off the screaming wails of the bombs. Big Ben is broken, a bleeding gash on the gray skyline. His castles have crumbled, and his boy is dying. His boys are dying, and he feels wretched, insides twisted as the Underground has collapsed inward, trapping the cars and leaving the broken to die.

“It won’t hurt long,” England whispers through his bloody lips. His children are dead, and his skies are gray lined with red. “You’ve been very strong.”

The boy gives a choked cry, flinching with pain. England feels for his pulse, but the skin is damp and cold. It’s a terrible sort of miracle that he’s even conscious enough to scream. He dampens his lips with his cracked tongue, tasting the saltiness of his blood.

“It’s going to be all right,” he promises. “You’re safe.” He wants to say more, but the child’s eyes are fluttering. He knows the sign, but he still clenches harder onto the small hand, trying to draw him back to the painful life. His back hurts, and his eyes ache, and the boy slowly slips from life, without another word. He hears a broken “no” pass his own lips, and he curses himself for his own selfishness, curses the empty world for the empty pain. He’s angry, smashing his fist onto the rock near the child’s head, enough so that his finger twists and snaps and cracks, and only then does he allow himself to viciously cry. He used to send the children to the countryside, but there’s no more countryside to send.

He’ll die broken and bruised, sitting in the middle of the road with a child’s lost body.

-

But he doesn’t die.

England sits in the sick bay, hands bandaged and ankle taped. It’s not enough, and he sneaks off while the Queen talks to her people through the telly, calm and majestic, and armed to the teeth. He sits in the open area, where his citizens are slowly rebuilding their lives. A broken swell of pride rises in his heart, and he has to laugh. He must look hysterical, barely holding a glass of water in his broken hands, and just laughing.

There’s little trophies of life everywhere, signs of nationalism and pride. He half-expects God Save the Queen to erupt on the speakers at any moment, and he stares at the little flags, blue, red, white, and then at the teddy bears dressed like guards. They don’t have the royal guards anymore, though. They don’t have much, even if everybody’s thankful. They’re forgetting, in the way that one day, only their parents will remember the Sex Pistols, or someone says a line of Shakespeare and they attribute it to an episode of The Weakest Link. He doubts they’ll have even that much.

He survives. He perseveres. It’s humanity and it’s him, and his laughter catches in his throat and rattles inside his broken rib. The food tastes strange and the water isn’t right, and he’ll never walk on land again. There are no more sunsets and no more sitting on the beach in the cold evenings. He’s gotten his wish, and he’ll never have to deal with anyone again. All of them, gone. Just him, in the stars, alone.

If he clutches the glass hard enough, so that the pain shoots up his arms and burns his nerves, he can forget what they have done to the whale.

-

America would never have any of it.

But America isn’t here.

-

Forget or protest.

Even one percent, says the man long dead. They have that technology. England sits at the chair, mended hands folded over his lap. Even he’s got a vote, because the population is small enough for that, and all the papers are drawn up for it.

He can press forget.

Forget that he’s become the country of culling children, the country that tortures animals and the country that floats cold and alone in space. And it’s cold, burning cold to the touch when he presses his hands against the walls. The stars are closer than ever, but he remembers so much more. He remembers the wars that left the white-lined scars on his body, and the friendships that left the red bleeding wounds on his heart. He tells himself that he’s happy. The silence of space fills his ears, enough to suffocate him.

It’s not about space. He can conquer space. Being small was inconsequential. He’s always been small, but he’s always been stronger. But he’s started to talk to himself, enough that he’s sick of his own voice. It started off small, then it grew, until he’s muttering to himself as he buys his fish and chips, and tells himself that it tastes different even as he eats it. He strikes up conversations with strangers, and ends them abruptly because he’s unsatisfied.

But he can forget it all. Start over again, anew, and actually believe the lies fed to himself. He doesn’t have to think about the pulsing pink brain in the dungeons, not how he can hear the screams at night when he sleeps, not even about his own past. He can choose to forget all the other countries in the world, and it would only take a button.

As always, though, he stands up and leaves the room. He can do that, because he’s England.

-

So he doesn’t press Forget.

-

He’s lonely and miserable. It’s just a matter of forgetting, and forgetting comes with time. It doesn’t come with machines. Every time it comes to vote, he’ll sit there and stare at the telly, then at the buttons. They look absurd. It’s all absurd.

They just have to wait for the world to stop burning.

-

Screaming wakes him up. He sits up in his bed, grasping his hair with his hands. Tries to forget.

His mind is screaming with memories, and he grits his teeth. A high, keening scream rings in his mind, and his body is wracked in phantom pains when he tries to lie down and sleep. Slowly, he folds his arms over his head, shaking and sweating. He wants to forget.

It’s just a matter of forgetting.

-

If he forgets, he wants to forget in bits and pieces.

They’ll fall away, just like how the Queen’s mask falls to the floor. It’ll start with the screaming, then with the children, then with the countries. He can’t decide the order, but he imagines it vividly, enough that he can almost taste it between his teeth. He can taste the happiness, and it tastes like bad fish and chips that he can’t remember that it’s bad. It’ll taste like space air because he won’t remember the fresh air that blew in the winds on the ground. It’ll taste like the horrid smell of burnt brain in the dank dungeons, because he’ll never have tasted burgers and truffles and sushi.

He wouldn’t miss them, because he wouldn’t remember them.

And he wouldn’t remember to think about them, wonder if they’re even in space anymore, if they’ve gone and died or dissolved while he wasn’t looking. Not remember, with cold pangs in his heart, that he won’t see them again. He won’t remember the false last good-byes, and he won’t remember sitting on an upturned road, feet in the dirt and dust, and watching the starships rise up into the atmosphere, burning until they became stars.

-

Because they’ll forget him.

It wouldn’t matter anymore, that he was England, or that he’s still England. It wouldn’t matter to them, on their own starships, because they’ll find new friends and easily cover up his presence. He doesn’t want to be forgotten, because he doesn’t give a damn about leaving his mark through history. He wishes on them, viciously, to look out the windows, and feel the same pang of pain that passes over him every time he remembers them.

But they’ll forget him.

-

In the dungeons, he sits with the abandoned children.

For some reason, it comforts him.

The crown prince doesn’t say anything, just offers him some bad bangers and mash. It still makes him sick to his stomach, but he eats the entire plate until he vomits.

-

Storms never came to the Starship UK.

But one came.

-

He recognized him. He’s known him all his life, and he shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a different face, this time, but he recognizes it all the same. A brief image of trenches, sounds of horses screaming, men’s intestines in the mud. But he studies the face, and watches him bump into a crying girl. He does it four times.

It’s the first time England’s laughed in years, and it hurts, shaking him to his toes.

He goes to stand by the crying girl, who’s wearing a bright red coat. She knows him well, so she doesn’t startle at his appearance. But he doesn’t want to get seen or noticed, so he bends his head to murmur to her.

“All right there, love?”

The girl has an open, honest face, and she bites her bottom lip as she nods. She has a quick mind, and he already notices the way her hand rested in her pocket, fingers curled where her ID was missing. He can’t help but smile at her wit.

“It’s going to be all right.” He’s not used to his own voice, not since he stopped talking to himself. It’s a little hoarse, but it must be reassuring, because her eyes swiftly dart over to him. He doesn’t know what to say, or how to comfort her at all. He’s not used to it.

But he takes her hand, and gives it a squeeze, and says, “Promise.”

He doesn’t want her to question his credentials, so he releases her hand and hastily steps away. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he has a feeling about a hallway. When he turns again, he can see the girl following a red-headed woman, and he has to smirk to himself.

-

He stands at the end of the hallway, watching the Doctor sonic the walls of the small aisle. They don’t talk to each other, not at first, because the Doctor is busy and England is in no hurry. It’s been a while since he’s within his company again, and his heart pounds despite himself. It’s the Doctor, who saves all the worlds, and destroys all in the same breath. It’s the Doctor, who travels through time in a blue box that England hasn’t forgotten. It’s the Doctor, and he’s come.

“So,” the Doctor said, spinning the screwdriver over his fingers.

“So.” It’s a different face, but it’s always a different face. He assumes he’s seen enough of them by then to try and keep track, but it’s always out of order.

“So, there’s something wrong. You know there’s something wrong. It’s in your eyes, it’s always in your eyes. But you won’t tell me.” The Doctor points the screwdriver directly at him, and England doesn’t flinch, just leans against the door and watches him. “Now, that’s curious. And I know curious. So. What is it that you’re not telling me?”

“I’m not telling you that you’re trespassing.” England points to the sign. “But I’ll tell you now. No entering. It doesn’t say no entering, except for doctors.”

“Well, it should. What if someone needed help in here?”

“Then we’d get a real doctor, one with some medical knowledge.” England smirked. “It’s that Scottish girl again.”

“You’ve met her? Oh, that’s good. No need for pesky introductions.” The Doctor returned to rattling the boxes, tapping on the walls, listening to the echoes against the cold and creaking steel.

“She’s nice enough. Pity that’s she’s Scottish.”

“Oh, don’t let her hear you say that. If she hears you—”

“I know.” England rubbed his upper chin in memory of the darkened bruise. “I still mean it, though.”

“Stubborn as always, even in space. I mean, you’re surrounded by millions of stars, and there’s other planets, billions of other life forms, and you’re not even the least bit excited about it.” The Doctor only popped out his head from his task for a moment. “I don’t even know how you do it.”

“America was always the excited one. Aliens, all that.” England let the memory pass without words, tried not to remember America, didn’t taste burgers. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as I’m always doing, of course.” The Doctor reappeared again, twiddling the screwdriver within his fingers. “Except with a cool new screwdriver.”

“Old new screwdriver. And those old clothes. That same old bowtie.” England’s hand reached to touch his own tie, smoothing it down handsomely, even as the Doctor frowned.

“Bowties are cool,” the Doctor reprimanded, and stopped fiddling around with the walls. He tilted his head, eyes piercing into him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Certainly. I’ll tell all the state secrets to the man who renamed the Virgin Queen. She was my wife, you know.”

“They’re all your wives. In some countries, they have rules against that.” The Doctor holds up a screw, and glances at the screwdriver in his other hand. It almost seems like he’s come to a conclusion when he shrugs and throws away the screw. “Not compatible,” he explains briefly to England, before disappearing into the mess again.

“It must be nice,” he said. “Traveling with her.”

“Aha.” The Doctor smiles, the one he wears when he knows something, but he’s not holding anything in his hands. Instead, he points the screwdriver at England again. “That’s what you’re not telling me. Part of it, anyway.”

“What?” England recoiled, as if he was going to be soniced. “That I like your new companion? It’s no surprise.”

“Not a surprise, never a surprise, but you usually don’t say it. You’re lonely, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said shortly. “I’m doing fine on my own.”

“Scotland’s gone and up and left. Were there any Welsh onboard? I don’t remember. Too busy looking at water, you know how it goes.”

“Welsh?” England tilted his head. It was the first thing that the Doctor said that even interested him. “What’s Welsh?”

“What’s Welsh. That’s what he says, what’s Welsh.” The Doctor slowly frowns. “You know, Wales?”

England stiffens at the mention. He didn’t think the Doctor would so quickly figure out the space whale, not when he was still poking around the machinery and the loose spark plugs. But he sees the Queen approaching down the corridor, and he hastily backpedals, disappearing into the drifting smoke. It was curious, though, that the Doctor said whales. England glanced out a passing window, and wondered if there were legions of whales drifting in space, just waiting to be found, waiting to find the Starship UK.

He’s getting too old for lost hope, so he grabs an extra cloak from the storage, flipping it over his face. He would go done to the dungeon, because the Doctor would figure it all out soon enough. And because he promised to play checkers with a child with blond hair and blue eyes.

-

“Nobody human,” the Doctor said, “has anything to say to me today.”

-

It was over, quickly, and for a second, he thought he was going to die. Several seconds, as the world tossed around him, rattling and breaking and falling apart. The end of England, the end of Starship UK, and he thought, briefly, that he would be forgotten. Lost amidst the stars and supernovas, a speck of dust that would eventually vanish into the black holes on the other side of galaxies. He caught a child from being tossed around, and he thought, for a second, that he really was, like the Doctor said, lonely.

He didn’t want to be forgotten.

-

Protest.

Not Forget.

-

“It’s gorgeous.” The Doctor didn’t turn his head at his approach, still staring at the blue space ahead of them. The white dust drifted slowly across the spirals of the universe. England turned his head to look, as well, and thought the universe was large enough to conquer.

“A happy ending, for once.” England snorted. “It was impossible.”

“And it happened. But you wanted it, too.” The Doctor slightly turned, faintly grinning. He was still angry, he could tell, but he had two large hearts that were bigger on the inside, so England, human, was allowed to stand next to him.

“I always thought I’d be happier alone.” England stretched out his palms to the glass panes. “Too bad the world doesn’t work like that.”

“But you never forgot.” The Doctor glanced at him knowingly, and England felt irritated all over again.

“I could never forget. But they’ll forget me.” England rapped his knuckles on the glass. He thought about the flags, fluttering in the sky, as the spaceships ascended into the upper atmospheres, and how they all left their broken rock behind. He thought about the gray smog, and he thought about how they would never remember that one, miserable old man, from centuries ago, who scowled at them and lectured them and scolded them. And they’d never know how happy that unhappy old man had been, doing it.

“Impossible.” The Doctor rocked back and forth, eyes still fixated on the stars above. “Is that what you really think? Because that’s stupid.”

“It isn’t,” England said, and resisted the urge to flick the Doctor in the ear.

“You don’t think,” the Doctor said, finally turning his gaze onto him until his eyes seemed to stare through him, “that they’ll remember you? They won’t remember their friend? That, at some moments, when they turn the corner of the road, they’ll see that shade of blue, just that right shade of blue, that makes their heart ache just that much more? Because that’s just stupid. It doesn’t work like that. If it did, the universe wouldn’t be the universe anymore.”

“I’m not very memorable.” It was a lie, and he wasn’t sure why he said it if he knew it was a lie. But the Doctor only grinned, tapping the tip of his long nose.

“You were a good friend, England. You won’t be forgotten.”

England struggled to keep his face still, even as it felt like the words he had been waiting his entire life to hear had finally been said. The dam gates burst from his heart, and an overwhelming sense of emotions flooded him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and when he opened them again, the universe seemed flooded with the still blue color that stretched through the stars, covering the atmosphere.

He saw Amy was approaching, even though the Doctor had returned his gaze to the universe. England shifted away silently, leaving them in peace. It was enough, he thought. This would be enough.

-

He sat with the pointed bit of the whale curled around him, like a cat. When he pet the shiny, sticky covering, it almost seemed like the whale was purring underneath him. He had grown rather fond of it, and the whale had grown rather fond of him. It clenched too tightly on his hips, sometimes, and left sticky trails on his cloak, but it was also warm to his touch.

Though he was alone on the ship, perhaps he wasn’t forgotten. Maybe, somewhere, America would be reaching for a burger and remember his childhood. Or France would reach to scratch the back of his hand and touch the scar he had given him. Japan might look at the stars, and remember the night of their alliance. It was all foolish hopes, but he clung onto them, nevertheless. He felt old, and he thought the silence would kill him.

He sat directly facing the crack in the wall, and he glanced at it, silently. Sometimes, he had the strange feeling that he hadn’t always been alone on the ship. But the whale mewled, and he returned to petting the hard, sticky shell, and closed his eyes to rest.

He wouldn’t be forgotten.