WARNING: Pathetic nostalgic whining ahead. Please feel free to ignore. XD

…So. This. Well, here's the thing – and I don't know how the hell it happened because I swear four years has never gone by so fast in all my life but…

I have finished university. o.O I don't graduate until July (if I even graduate at all, lolololol) but I finished up everything this week, had my final exam for English Literature (Fantasy and Fandom – I wrote about King Arthur and fanfic (more on this later) and my friend Philippa wrote about Merlin and fairies, good times, good times) last Tuesday, I was done with American Studies weeks ago and… yeah. I can't believe it. Three years at the University of Birmingham and one year abroad at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. 2007-2011. That's what it says on my ID card. Seriously. WHERE DID MY FOUR YEARS GO? T.T

My friend Eleana and I made a "pilgrimage", of sorts, to Stratford-Upon-Avon on Thursday, which is about an hour on the train from Birmingham. Stratford-Upon-Avon is where William Shakespeare was born and lived the majority of his life. We went to his house and also to his grave, where we pleaded to him for good grades on our English dissertations (we both did ours on Shakespeare) and also for our Shakespeare exam. This is obviously the greatest 'please-give-me-a-degree' method ever. XD

Anyway, I'm a dreadfully nostalgic person and I've been in/written for three of my big fandoms whilst at university (I hadn't even heard of Code Geass until I joined the anime club here!), my writing has often been inspired by my classes and their reading material and I've come up with ideas for fics whilst wandering to and fro both Birmingham and Cincinnati, scribbling notes whilst loitering in various places in both libraries, etc… Poison Apple dominated my first year and half of my second year, The Ghost in the Machine was conceived and plotted out during the latter half of my second year in Birmingham's library, and my third and fourth years (comprising my year in the USA and my final year here) have been pretty much Hetalia-rific (as is my degree programme, as I have said before – I almost feel obliged to ship USUK with a degree title like mine). And given all this, I thought I should post a final thing, sort of like I did with O America this time last year when I left UC, as a kind of… finality.

And given that it's my current fandom and the one most applicable to my degree, I settled (with little persuasion, you may be sure) on Hetalia and USUK. To commemorate my last ever exam, let's go with Arthurian legend and throw in a little American Studies on the side and be done with it. :3

The title comes from T. H. White's The Once and Future King, the overall title of the tetralogy of books beginning with the famous – and excellent – The Sword in the Stone. Oh, and in case it throws you off, the tense deliberately alternates between present and past in the first segment.

Once and Future

[And handwritten in red in the manuscript: HIC JACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS]

Once upon a time, time itself ran unchecked and unharried, a dark-age world of wordless history which went quietly as it wished and was forgotten and then later lied about. Under the right pen, the correct influence, embellishments became the embroidery of fact, fantastic flourishes with no hold on reality (even their colours too wonderful to have ever existed).

And so, in the gossamer inbetween of fact and fiction, a part of history which might never have happened played out on the bank of an enchanted river which might never have been.

"What do we await?" Sir Bedivere asks (he was who charged with the departure of Excalibur, only to lie twice before throwing it to the water and to Nimuë).

"Ah, these questions," Arthur replied gently. "Yet I think you know. We all know." He smiled at the boy lying across his chest, clutching at him, small fists clenched in his blood-soaked tunic. "The story is nearing its end."

The boy – physically just at the verge of puberty, perhaps about twelve in face and body, far older in mind and manner – gives a fierce shake of his blonde head. He buries his face deeper into Arthur's heaving chest, quivering against him.

"Neither," he gritted out. "This is not how it ends – nor is this a mere story."

Arthur seems amused. He puts his hand to the boy's head and strokes at his damp hair.

"Not mere," he agreed. He grimaced, shifted, and blood blotched further. "But it is a story. You know that. Do not be stubborn."

"I say that it is not," the boy insists angrily. "Have I not at least that much authority?" He lifts his head and meets Arthur's gaze, his green eyes hot and wet, his cheek smeared with his king's blood. "Is my presence here not enough to make this into the truth?"

Arthur smiled.

"But I run in your blood and spill from your tongue in all languages," he says. "You know me in Latin and Welsh and English. I exist in your head and your heart, not in your lands. That is why you are here, England. How could you not be?"

"Yet it all lies unravelled," the boy said, "and I am anchored here no more than Francis, at least. French is another language that I know you in." He paused. "Or will know you in." He sighed. "Even now I am unsure as to whether I should have called him Myrddin or Merlin – or, indeed, will have to."

"Ah, you believe, then, that all retellings exist alongside each other?" Arthur asks. "All side-by-side, distorted mirror images of one another. At the banks of how many rivers do I lie dying at this exact moment, do you think?"

"All and none," the boy said desperately, sinking against Arthur's shuddering chest once again.

"But perhaps it is simply that the story loops upon itself with each retelling," Arthur counters. "Therefore I do not die as I should in every single incarnation at once – but instead repeat this scene for every time that it is necessary."

"Is it always necessary?" the boy asked miserably. He watched Sir Bedivere, who stood at the edge of the bank with his gaze turned towards the boat which came now out of the mist, gliding on glass. "If not for Lancelot—"

"Yes – so the French book says." Arthur smiles weakly. "Launcelot and Gwenhwyfar. Lancelot and Guinevere. It is as it is."

"Must it always be so?"

"I suppose so – do not forget that 'Arthur' is terribly close to 'author', after all."

"And is that author Malory?" The boy clenched his fists. "Better Geoffrey have the authority than him. That he would... name the thing Le Morte d'Arth—"

"Oh, I think it fitting nonetheless."

The boat hits the shore and the ladies rise; long, willowy shapes in black with Morgan Le Fay pulling back her hood to show her moon-white face and the jet tumble of her hair about her slender shoulders. Arthur motions towards a silent Sir Bedivere, calling for help into the boat. This is a strange ending for a story about a great king who gained his crown by chance, by proving his worth with a sword struck through a stone. Doesn't someone like King Arthur deserve a death of more dignity, lying in some richly-draped four-poster with his beautiful queen at his side and all his loyal knights around him like the Round Table at Camelot? Didn't he deserve a more fitting end than a scattered court of liars and adulterers and traitors, a kingdom torn totally in two, his fatality a strike from his own usurper nephew? Is this – the terrible fall – the price of greatness?

Sir Bedivere gently lifted his king, the sister-witches drifting from the boat to aid him. The boy, gently moved aside by Morgana, knelt in the grass, his eyes and hair bright as he watched them take Arthur away. His cheek was sticky with blood, as were his small hands.

It is old-new-familiar blood.

"To Avalon, then!" he called as he watched the boat begin to nudge away from the shore. "To lie asleep until I need you once more! If you must go then do not forget that promise to return!"

There is no answer. The boy stands up, wiping at his face, and comes to the shore to stand at Sir Bedivere's side. They both look at the boat carrying King Arthur to his resting place – but sometimes Sir Bedivere isn't here.

Sometimes it was just him and Arthur and that horrible habit history had of repeating itself.

"This is Malory," the boy decides (sometimes he is called England, sometimes he likes to be called Arthur). "It must be."

Sir Bedivere – who was sometimes Sir Bedwere – simply gave a silent nod. The mist fell in and the boat disappeared. Kynge Arthure was dead.

Was and will be.

The heat of the day was heavy, dead-weight on lazy limbs even in the lace-edged shade; even the air was thick, lying low in the lungs like water, drowning on dry land. England loosened his cravat without opening his eyes, careful not to shift the child asleep across his chest, and settled again in his ungainly, comfortable sprawl beneath the oak tree. How he wished that today's fashion didn't call for starched shirts, velvet tunics and embroidered waistcoats, for buttoned breeches and silk stockings and buckled leather shoes. It was too hot for all these layers; yet anything less would be considered indecent (but how he envied America his loose linen shirt and cotton pantaloons).

Ah, but it was all very well to talk about what was prim and proper when he wore a crown of wilting flowers in his flaxen hair. They lay limp and damp and fading against his brow, neatly-braided by their stems with small fingers. America had made it whilst listening to England read Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, kneeling up on his lap to carefully put the finished garland on his head.

"Now you are a king, Arthur," his colony had said, smiling.

Colonies, of course, were proof of greatness, of wealth and of overseas commerce, success in trade and exploration. The Empire was growing, filling the void left by Spain's, having pushed out the Dutch and holding their own against France's armies, too. The ports of the North American colonies bustled with busy trade, flourishing beneath the flow of sugar and spices, of silk and cotton and tea, salt and wood and books and tobacco and rope. This was the beginning of wonderful things.

England touched the flower crown that America had made for him. He was marked, then, as a ruler. Even America could see it in him.

(Just as he could see it in America.)

He knew these idylls well.

"What are you reading?"

England raised his book a little, not looking up from it. America tilted his head to better read the title, popping his gum.

"The Sword in the Stone, huh?" He straightened again. "Isn't that some King Arthur thing?"

"Yes. T. H. White. It's rather recent. 1938, in fact." England turned the page. "A somewhat-modern retelling, you might say."

"Uh huh." America sat down on the opposite bed and started to unlace his uniform boots; he dropped them heavily to the concrete floor, the sound echoing loudly off the walls of the tiny bunker. "Any good?"

"Yes."

"Does he die in that one?"

England scowled.

"No."

America flopped across his bed, loosening his tie.

"Well," he chirped, "it sounds more cheerful than that other one you like. The one where he does die, you know?"

"Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, you mean?" England asked pleasantly. "Or do you perhaps mean Alfred Tennyson's The Idylls of the King? Or do you mean—"

"Right, right, I get it," America cut in crossly. "The guy dies a lot."

"Or only once, depending on how you look at it." England finally glanced up at him over the book. "With regard to your earlier question, despite the fact that he hasn't died yet, I expect that he will in White's later books. He always has, after all. It seems... rather too hopeful to suppose that he won't. The story – the way it goes – never seems to change much."

"Yeah." America put his arms behind his head and blew another bubble. "Merlin puts sword in stone, Arthur pulls out sword and becomes king, he marries Guinevere and gets himself a boatload of loyal knights and builds himself a Round Table, everything's great and Arthur's an amazing king and they all go on lots of adventures, but then Lancelot starts putting the moves on Guinevere in the meantime and everything just ends up going all crazy because that one guy... uh, I forget his name—"

"Mordred."

"Yeah, him, he thinks he'll make a better king than Arthur and usurps his throne, only it all goes horribly wrong, there's a war, almost everyone is hacked to bits and almighty King Arthur dies on a river bank and sails off in a boat." America rolled onto his side to look at England. "Kind of a lame ending, don't you think?"

England smiled faintly.

"It is a little disappointing, isn't it? That he falls so far from grace, I mean." He frowns. "But then war will rip the grandest rug out from beneath the most powerful of kings, let me assure you."

America smiled lemon-sharp.

"Yeah," he said idly, "I suppose you would know, huh?"

"Mmm."

England went back to his book, flexing his shoulders into the coarse pillow propped against the metal headboard. There was silence for a while before America shifted and got up again; England paid him no heed, content to ignore him, until America suddenly appeared at the foot of his cot and began to clamber on. The pathetic bedframe rattled beneath his added weight, wailing in protest even after he had settled next to England with his head on his shoulder.

"Hello, Alfred," England said blandly, not looking at him. "What can I do for you?"

"I want to see the book."

"Bugger off. You always do this. Get your own books instead of trying to steal mine before I've finished them."

"Meanie." America lifted England's arm and got under it – so that England was half-embracing him whether he wanted to be or not. "Read it to me, then."

"No."

"Meanie!" America whined again. "Go on! I like when you read to me."

"I'm almost to the end. You won't understand what's going on."

"Arthur, I just rattled off the whole storyline from memory." He nudged against England's shoulder affectionately. "Anyway, I don't mind. I'll enjoy it anyway. I always like the stories you read to me. Be nice for once."

England groaned irritably and swatted at him with the book.

"Oh, you drive a hard bargain," he muttered. "By which I mean that I know you won't shut up until you get your way."

"I'm a spoiled brat," America agreed cheerfully, "and you only have yourself to blame." He nudged him again, this time more insistently. "Come on, Your Royal Highness King Arthur. Tell me your story."

"Fine, fine. But sod off afterwards."

"No promises."

England sighed and took his arm back so that he could turn the pages, America following the motion and moulding into the space so that they were pressed together on the narrow camp bed. It didn't appear that he had any intention of going anywhere, effectively using England as a pillow; he wasn't crushing but he was heavy nonetheless, the weight of his frame, of his muscle and meat, even the material of his military dress oppressive on England's form. He was so tall that his large feet dangled off the edge of the cot and there was barely the width to spare for them both, even halfway-spooning like this. Everything about him was so overgrown, so barely-contained, so powerful.

He listened, nonetheless, to how the Wart pulled the titular sword from the stone; how his brother, Sir Kay needed a sword for the jousting tournament and had forgotten his own at the locked-up inn and that the Wart had been thinking only of Kay when he went to that churchyard, had not even read the promise in the inscription, 'Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of England'. He listened with half-sleepy interest, resting his cheek on England's chest the way he had when he was a child, to how, at first, the Wart had been unable to free the sword and had been capable of pulling it out lightly and fiercely only after remembering all that Merlyn had taught him.

Merlyn lived backwards through time in this story instead of forwards – and so he had known that Arthur would be able to do it. He had seen that he would become king—

"Well, I know that too," America muttered. "It's pretty much the whole point of the story, right? He's King Arthur, after all."

"Yes, I suppose." England rubbed fondly at America's scalp, tousling his hair. "But, nonetheless, you have the benefit of knowing how it goes."

"Even so," America countered, "it's always the same."

"And it always will be."

"Yeah." America shifted against England and looked at the bunker ceiling for a long moment. "I talked to Eisenhower on the phone this morning."

"Did you?" England felt America's hand come crawling alongside his, looking blindly to clasp it, and slipped his own into it. America gave him a nervous squeeze on contact. "What did he say?"

"The bomb. It... it's done. They've tested it and everything. It's ready to go."

"Ah." England exhaled. "I see."

"What do you think?"

"It hardly matters what I think, Alfred. I expect Truman will consult with us only as a formality."

"I want to know what you think, though."

"I think we'll have a lot to answer for if we choose to end the war that way." England sighed, feeling America clutch tighter at his hand. "But at this point... I don't know how effective simply beating Kiku into submission will be. I don't think we've got a lot of choice, to be honest."

"That's how I feel. God damn it, I want the victory – I just don't know if I want the consequences. ...You know? This weapon can turn an entire city to ash in less than a minute."

England gave a nod, studying the ceiling.

"It will certainly make a lot of things very different," he said quietly. "That's how these things go, too."

"They know it." America chewed at his bottom lip. "In Washington, I mean. How dominant we're gonna be when we come outta this. They... they really want this for me, they want to grab everything they can, use the power vacuum to our advantage even if it means climbing over everyone else's corpses to do it. I mean, you... you're just not the same guy you were in 1939—"

"That's certainly one way of putting it." England turned his head to look at America, smiling weakly. "But I knew this would happen. It's... it's inevitable. Was inevitable. My Empire's been falling apart for years – this war has simply been the final nail in the coffin."

America met his gaze, his blue eyes wide and frightened.

"Arthur," he said, "I don't know if I want that kind of power – your old hegemony with these new nightmare-weapons to back it up—"

"Whoso pulleth," England sighed in reply. "Even swords in stones come with responsibility – though you may choose not to wield the weapon. Either way, you needn't fret, love." He squeezed America's hand again. "You'll come crashing down again soon enough."

"You're pretty sure of yourself," America said flatly. "You living backwards through time like Merlin, huh?"

"Perhaps." England smirked. "But how could I not know this story when I am right in the midst of it?"

"Story?" America blinked.

"Of course." England leaned in and pressed a kiss to America's brow. "The one about how the world was once mine and in the future will be yours."

Looooong ANs. Apologies. Ignore if you want. XD

HIC JACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS: Latin for 'Here lies Arthur, the once and future king'. Malory wrote it in red in his original manuscript. Fun fact: He wrote Le Morte d'Arthur whilst in prison. Having borrowed heavily from French sources, which in turn had been translated (and embellished – Sir Lancelot is a French addition) from Welsh and Latin Arthurian stories, littered all throughout his text is the line 'So the Frensshe booke maketh mention' or variations of it. 'Myrddin' (roughly pronounced 'Merthin') and 'Gwenhwyfar' are the original Welsh spellings of these characters' names. They were changed to the more familiar spellings by the French and Malory used these newer names in his version.

Geoffrey is Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was a cleric living in the 1100s – he is most famous for writing a book entitled the Historia Regum Britanniae, which was the "history" of Britain's kings. Buuuuuut basically Geoffrey just made it up. Amongst other nonsense, he passed off King Arthur as a real king and wrote a whole wonderful history of his reign, even writing about Merlin's youth and how he advised Vortigern about a pair of dragons fighting under the foundations of a castle he was trying to build and it's like… yes, that's very nice, Geoffrey, but that didn't really happen, did it? XD Nonetheless, it was very popular in its day and had a great influence on later Arthurian legend. In fact, if it wasn't for Geoffrey writing down his ridiculous lies, we might not know about King Arthur at all! Thanks, Jeff!

SO. Geoffrey reads Latin and Welsh and decides to pretend that Arthur is real history. The French like his lies so much that they translate the sources he used and write their own Arthur stories, adding an OC/self-insert in the form of Sir Lancelot du Lac. Sir Thomas Malory gets bored in jail and swots up on the French before wiling away his time writing his own lengthy version of Arthur's story. Le Morte d'Arthur is so popular that Arthurian legend is embedded in British folklore permanently, after which many other writers fashion their own stories and poems (like Alfred Tennyson, William Morris and T. H. White) – and then come films (Disney's The Sword in the Stone) and spoofs (Monty Python's Holy Grail) and TV shows (BBC's Merlin)... Basically, what I wrote in my exam was that Arthurian legend and its constant revival/reworking by different authors and production companies is essentially fanfic – and it's true, it is, right down to the inclusion of OCs, OTPs and whatnot. With this fic, I was trying to put a more metafictional spin on it, suggesting that all versions of the legend are parallel literary worlds which either all co-exist at the same time or replay like a sort of time-loop. I think the time-loop idea is more appropriate given the other idea in this fic, the fact that history has a habit of repeating itself (with reference here to how countries rise and fall in power the way that each new reworking of Arthurian legend will almost always depict the rise and fall of Camelot). However, I didn't want to rule out the idea of all of the 'deaths' of Arthur happening alongside one another with England's 'literary consciousness' (the fact that he cannot help but exist inside the literature of his country and language simply because he's England) being present in every single one simultaneously because of the very notion of 'once and future' – the fact that King Arthur is both past and future all at once. This is mirrored when it comes to the WWII segment and we're right on the brink of the end of the war and the sudden huge power slide that takes place, decimating Europe (and the British Empire in particular) and shifting all the money and hegemony to the USA. Here, England and America exist alongside each other with their power precariously hanging in the balance of 'once' and 'future' – and more so that they both know that America is about to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Gahhh, it's a bit of a mind-fuck when you think about it all too hard, haha.

Lastly, on an unrelated note, my university library legacy: So given that I nicked both a 1995 train ticket from the University of Birmingham to Kidderminster that I found in a book about Woodrow Wilson (it cost £4.90!) and a 'To be returned before date below' leaf which had the oldest date I could find on it (12th May, 1939, incidentally) from some very crusty Shakespeare book, I thought I had better return the favour and leave odd scavengers like me something to steal in kind. I put some teeny-tiny little drawings on scrap paper in books in both the Shakespeare and American Literature sections and left a sheet of my amazing-absolutely-official-completely-gay USUK notepad paper in a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt which had stuff in it about how he and Churchill were BFFs. Seemed fitting. XD I wonder who will find them? Lawl, I'm so laaaaaaaaame. I should have left a fake treasure map in a book, too…

THAT IS ALL. Last ever university-written fic. Sad times. =C Hello, Real World. I don't much like the look of you, I have to be honest.

Thank you for reading!

RobinRocks

xXx

Final note: Because I couldn't think of where else to fit it. Arthur is called 'the Wart' in The Sword in the Stone because it rhymes with 'Arthur'. Sort of. Maybe. That's Kay's reasoning, anyway. XD