Drabble Post - Hard Choices (Hetalia)
Aug. 24th, 2024 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kristenskThis was actually one of the earliest "Hetalia" shorts I attempted, but it didn't come together until recently.
Hard Choices
Alfred would be asked, later, when his men recounted the incident, how it felt to point a musket at his father. And, he would answer that it was hard. Because it was.
But, what he wouldn’t say was that it wasn’t the hardest thing he had done in the course of the war for independence. He wasn’t sure how the mortals around him would react if he told them the truth.
Because the truth was that, although his father had tried to shield him from the brutal realities, he had seen his father with mortal wounds before. Had seen blood and brains on old bandages as his father revived whole beneath the gore. Had learned that such injuries weren’t fatal to their kind.
More, he had already wounded his father more deeply than physical wounds ever could when he sided with revolutionaries. And, that too had been hard.
But, the true hardest thing he had ever done was the first time he had pointed a musket at an enemy soldier – a human, a mortal – and fired a shot that would injure his father deeper than any attack on his physical person ever could and, far worse, permanently end a life.
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Notes: I took a completely different tack with it, but I was prompted to write this after reading stirringwinds’ short fanfic “Rite”.
Hard Choices
Alfred would be asked, later, when his men recounted the incident, how it felt to point a musket at his father. And, he would answer that it was hard. Because it was.
But, what he wouldn’t say was that it wasn’t the hardest thing he had done in the course of the war for independence. He wasn’t sure how the mortals around him would react if he told them the truth.
Because the truth was that, although his father had tried to shield him from the brutal realities, he had seen his father with mortal wounds before. Had seen blood and brains on old bandages as his father revived whole beneath the gore. Had learned that such injuries weren’t fatal to their kind.
More, he had already wounded his father more deeply than physical wounds ever could when he sided with revolutionaries. And, that too had been hard.
But, the true hardest thing he had ever done was the first time he had pointed a musket at an enemy soldier – a human, a mortal – and fired a shot that would injure his father deeper than any attack on his physical person ever could and, far worse, permanently end a life.
----------------------------------------
Notes: I took a completely different tack with it, but I was prompted to write this after reading stirringwinds’ short fanfic “Rite”.
